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Chuck Courtney was born on 23 July 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), The Rookie (1990) and Pet Sematary (1989). He was married to Geraldine Courtney. He died on 19 January 2000 in North Hollywood, California, USA.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Kurt Cobain was born on February 20 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington. Kurt and his family lived in Hoquiam for the first few months of his life then later moved back to Aberdeen, where he had a happy childhood until his parents divorced. The divorce left Kurt's outlook on the world forever scarred. He became withdrawn and anti-social. He was constantly placed with one relative to the next, living with friends, and at times even homeless. Kurt was not the most popular person in high school as he was in public school. In 1985 Kurt left Aberdeen for Olympia where he formed the band Nirvana in 1986. In 1989 Nirvana recorded their debut album Bleach under the independent label Sub-Pop records. Nirvana became very popular in Britain and by 1991 they signed a contract with Geffen. Their next album Nevermind became a 90s masterpiece and made Kurt's Nirvana one of the most successful bands in the world. Kurt became trampled upon with success and found the new lifestyle hard to bear. In February 1992 Kurt married Courtney Love, the woman who was already pregnant with his child, Frances Bean Cobain. Nirvana released their next album Incesticide later that year. The album appealed to many fans due to the liner notes, which expressed Kurt's open-mindedness. In September 1993 Nirvana released their next album, 'In Utero', which topped the charts. On March 4, 1994, Kurt was taken to hospital in a coma. It was officially stated as an accident but many believe it to have been an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Family and friends convinced Kurt to seek rehab. Kurt was said to have fled rehab after only a few days from a missing person's report filed by Courtney Love. On April 8th Kurt's body was found in his Seattle home. In his arms was a shotgun, which had been fired into his head. Near him laid a suicide note written in red ink. It was addressed to his wife Courtney Love and his daughter Frances Bean Cobain. Two days after Kurt's body was discovered people gathered in Seattle, they began setting fires, chanting profanities, and fighting with police officers. They also listened to a tape of Courtney reading sections of the suicide note left by Kurt. The last few words were "I love you, I love you".- Actor
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Scotty Beckett was one of the cutest, most successful child actors of the 1930s and 1940s. His descent into a life of alcoholism, drugs, and crime remains one of the most tragic of Hollywood stories.
Born Scott Hastings Beckett on October 4, 1929, in Oakland, California, he and his family moved to Los Angeles when Scotty was 3 years old. Shortly after arriving in LA, Beckett's father was hospitalized and Scotty would frequently entertain his dad by singing songs. During one such visit, a Hollywood casting director happened to notice the cherubic youngster and told his parents he had movie potential. Scotty made his debut in Gallant Lady (1933) starring Clive Brook and Ann Harding. Scotty played a boy of three in the film, and Dickie Moore played the same character at the age of six. It was the first of several connections between the two child stars. The next year, he filled the hole vacated by Moore in Our Gang, and they later appeared in Heaven Can Wait (1943), portraying Don Ameche's character as a child. He and Moore finally appeared together in Dangerous Years (1947), which was Marilyn Monroe's screen debut.
Scotty appeared in fifteen Our Gang shorts in two years. Hal Roach noted a resemblance to Jackie Coogan and dressed Beckett accordingly, with an oversized cap and turtleneck sweater reminiscent of Coogan's outfit in The Kid (1921). He was paired with George 'Spanky' McFarland as a kind of partnership within the gang, and their sideline observations and wisecracks highlighted the series from 1934 until 1936, just as Porky and Buckwheat sparked the one-reelers from 1936 on.
After leaving Our Gang, Beckett emerged as one of the top child stars of his era, appearing in many films with the top stars of the late '30s and early '40s. Among his major credits were Dante's Inferno (1935) with Spencer Tracy, Anthony Adverse (1936) with Fredric March, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) with Errol Flynn, Conquest (1937) with Greta Garbo, Marie Antoinette (1938) with Norma Shearer, My Favorite Wife (1940) with Cary Grant, and Kings Row (1942) with Claude Rains.
In 1943 Scotty began attending Los Angeles High School and was named treasurer of his freshman class. He also appeared on Broadway that same year in the play "Slightly Married", receiving the only favorable notices of the production, and also played Junior in the hit radio show "The Life of Riley". Adolescence did not slow down his film career, as Scotty continued to win roles in such movies as My Reputation (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck and, most notably, The Jolson Story (1946), wherein he played the young Al Jolson.
He enrolled at USC but dropped out when he began receiving more offers from MGM, beginning with Cynthia (1947) with Elizabeth Taylor, A Date with Judy (1948), again with Taylor and Jane Powell (the future Mrs. Dickie Moore), Battleground (1949) with Van Johnson, Nancy Goes to Rio (1950), again with Powell, and The Happy Years (1950) with fellow child stars Dean Stockwell and Darryl Hickman.
At around the same time, Scotty began to gain notoriety for his nocturnal activities. Part of the young Hollywood set, Beckett was a fixture at parties and would frequently be seen with young stars like Roddy McDowall, Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, and Edith Fellows. His nightlife seemed to become more of a priority than his burgeoning acting career, and it started a trend of reckless, irresponsible behaviors which plagued Beckett the rest of his life. Early success without any sacrifice often breeds a sense of entitlement and a lack of responsibility or consequence. This seems to be an overriding theme, as Beckett began making headlines most Hollywood stars try to avoid.
In 1948 he was arrested for drunk driving after he crashed into another car after attending a frat party where he had "five bourbons". Scotty tried to run from the booking office after being arrested and refused to surrender his possessions. In September of 1949, he eloped with tennis star Beverly Baker. Right from the start, Scotty showed signs that he was not ready for marriage. On their honeymoon in Acapulco, Beckett allegedly threatened to punch a pool bystander in the nose. The couple separated after 5 months of marriage, divorcing in June of 1950. Newspapers covered the divorce, citing Baker's allegations of Beckett's jealousy and controlling, abusive behavior. Scotty tried to get Baker to quit tennis and stop seeing her parents. He also warned her never to have a soft drink "with any boy or man between 6 and 60".
In 1951, Becket met actress Sunny Vickers. Shortly after they began dating , Vickers became pregnant. They married in Phoenix on June 27, 1951, and five months later Scott Hastings Beckett, Jr. was born. The bad publicity of the divorce from Baker plus the forced marriage to Vickers in the conservative 1950s immediately made Beckett a Hollywood outcast. Between 1952 and 1954, Scotty landed only two roles, in relatively minor films, You're Only Young Twice (1952) and Hot News (1953). He was beginning to get desperate.
In early 1954, Beckett landed the role of "Winky" in a low-budget sci-fi show called Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954), which today has become a cult classic. However, as former co-stars and ex-friends such as Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Powell emerged as bonafide film stars of the 1950s, a supporting role in a fledgling, unproven industry likely was extremely frustrating for Scotty.
In February of that year, the Cavalier Hotel in Hollywood was robbed of a little more than $130 in cash. The bandit pistol-whipped the desk clerk and disappeared with the loot, or so police thought. Passed out drunk in the basement of the hotel, armed with a gun and a knife, was Scotty Beckett. He was arrested and charged with possession of a weapon, but not with robbery because the money was not found and the clerk could not positively identify the former star as the robber.
After posting bail, Beckett, with his wife and three-year-old son, fled to Mexico. He checked into a Tampico hotel under the name of Sean Bullock, giving Carmel, California as his address. There were two bullet holes in his car that Beckett said were from a gang who tried to rob him south of Juarez.
After running out of cash and options, Scotty wrote several checks on a nonexistent bank to different merchants. After Mexican authorities tracked him to a Ciudad Victoria hotel, he attempted to sneak himself and his family out of the hotel and got into a gunfight with the Mexican police in which 20 shots were exchanged. Miraculously, no one was killed, and Scott and Sunny were eventually captured. Scott Jr. was sent back to Los Angeles.
Scotty served only four months in a Mexican jail before returning to the US in September of 1954. He surrendered to authorities for the weapons charge, pleaded guilty, and amazingly was given only three years' probation. He told newspapers he saw this as an opportunity to pick up the pieces and start over with a clean slate, but it was too little, too late. He was dropped from the Rocky Jones series and replaced with Jimmy Lydon (with whom Beckett had appeared in Cynthia (1947)). A little more than a month later, Beckett was arrested in Las Vegas, once again for bouncing a check.
Scotty re-enrolled at USC to study medicine, but when Our Gang was reissued for TV in 1955 as The Little Rascals, Beckett saw an opportunity to make a comeback in the movies. He appeared in Three for Jamie Dawn (1956) and had walk-ons in The Oklahoman (1957) with Joel McCrea, and Monkey on My Back (1957) with Cameron Mitchell. He proved he could still act and exhibit that same youthful charm, appearing perfectly at ease on camera, particularly in his small role as a Navy corpsman with the Marine Corps in Monkey on My Back (1957). But just when it seemed as though a comeback might happen, Scotty self-destructed again.
In February of 1957, he was caught at a Mexican-US border crossing trying to bring illegal drugs into the US. He said the pills were for his wife, whom he claimed had a nervous ailment. In reality, Sunny Vickers was suffering from alcoholism and had checked herself into Metropolitan State Hospital for treatment. She filed for divorce in August of 1957. After Sunny was awarded custody of Scott Jr., Beckett attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. He recovered but realized he was finished as an actor. He tried his hand at selling used cars, among other things. He still had his charm, but he could not stay out of trouble.
In April of 1959, Beckett was arrested on a charge of drunk driving. In August of that same year, he was arrested for driving drunk again, but this time he did not emerge unscathed. He smashed his '52 sedan into a tree, fracturing his skull, thigh, and hip and suffering multiple lacerations to his head. Although he was given probation and a suspended sentence, he remained crippled for the rest of his life.
In September of 1963, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Now confined to a wheelchair from the near-fatal drunk driving accident, he attempted to stab his neighbor after a dispute. Scotty's wife of two years, Margaret, a divorcée with a teenage daughter named Susan, assisted in breaking up the fight. Three days later Beckett tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists. He recovered from this second suicide attempt, but by that time Margaret had had enough and moved out, taking Susan with her. As she was moving her belongings out, Scotty tried to stop her. He hit Susan over the head with a crutch that he now used after his car accident and was again arrested. He vowed to the judge at his sentencing "never to drink again".
After that, Scotty stayed out of the headlines for a few years. In 1967 he found employment driving an ambulance, perhaps to be close to the prescription drugs to which he was addicted, perhaps to try to revive his interest in becoming a doctor, perhaps to try to forget that he had once graced the screen with Hollywood's biggest stars before his own star had plummeted to earth, or perhaps because he had run out of alternatives.
On May 8, 1968, he checked into the Royal Palms Hotel, a Hollywood nursing home, after suffering a beating in what may have been a drug deal gone wrong. Two days later, he was dead from an overdose of barbiturates; his third suicide attempt was successful. He left behind a note, a son, and some wonderful films and memories.
Leonard Maltin summed it up best when he wrote, "It was a particularly sad end for someone who, as a child, had shown so much easy charm and talent." Scotty Beckett was not the first child star casualty, and he would not be the last, but his story is certainly one of the saddest.- Michelle Rounds was born on 10 May 1971 in Corning, New York, USA. She was married to Krista Monteleone and Rosie O'Donnell. She died on 11 September 2017 in Windermere, Florida, USA.
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- Music Department
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).- Born in Plano, Texas, Christopher Pettiet began career as a child actor making appearances in television series, made-for-television movies and films. He starred in two hit flicks, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) and Point Break (1991), and then joined the cast of the Western TV series The Young Riders (1989) as a young Jesse James. After the cancellation of The Young Riders, his acting career began to wane. According to his manager, Bob Villard, Chris was just about "impoverished", living on "small residual check(s)". He went to a couple of AA meetings and never admitted to a drug problem. Sadly, he died of an accidental drug overdose, just two months after his 24th birthday.
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When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Skye McCole Bartusiak was an American child actress and child model. She appeared in The Patriot (2000), Don't Say a Word (2001), as Rose Wilder in Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2002), 24 (2002-03), Boogeyman (2005), and Kill Your Darlings (2006). Bartusiak died at the age of 21 in her apartment behind her parents' home. While her mother, shortly after Bartusiak's death, stated she believed that her daughter's history of epileptic seizures may have had a role in her death, the coroner ruled the death resulted from an accidental drug overdose.- Georgia Davis was born on 17 September 1921 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, USA. She was an actress, known for Hoosier Holiday (1943). She was married to Red Skelton. She died on 10 May 1976 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.
- Born in Florida in 1949, Brad Davis moved to Georgia after graduating from high school to pursue an acting career. From there, he moved to New York City, twice, to find work. By the early 1970s Davis was acting in off-Broadway plays while studying acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage work led to his movie debut and to television shows such as the hit Sybil (1976) and the mini-series Roots (1977). His biggest success was in 1978 with the lead role in Midnight Express (1978) where he played Billy Hayes, a young American imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. It won him a Golden Globe award.
Another memorable movie role in 1982 was playing the title character of Querelle (1982), a ruggedly lethal sailor who seduces and sets both men and women's hearts aflutter.
Davis contracted AIDS in 1979 apparently from his one-time cocaine addiction, but in response to the anti-AIDS hysteria in Hollywood, Davis kept his illness a secret for a number of years and continued to act. His later years had him finally revealing that he had AIDS by the late 1980s and he became an AIDS activist in bashing the Hollywood industry and US government for ignoring and shunning victims suffering from the hideous disease. Brad Davis died in 1991 at age 41. His widow, Susan Bluestein, continues his activist work in the fight against AIDS. - Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
Hervé Villechaize was born in Montauban, France on April 23, 1943. He stopped growing very early and his father (who was a surgeon) tried to find a cure by visiting several doctors and hospitals. But there was none, so Hervé had to live with his small height and also with undersized lungs. He studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris and made an exhibition of his own paintings, which were well received. At 21, he left France for the USA where he continued to paint and to make photographs. He also started to participate in some movies and was quickly offered several roles for plays and then for cinema. His first big success was The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) where he was a killer associated to the villain Scaramanga (played by Christopher Lee). He inspired the TV-series Fantasy Island (1977) where he took the role of "Tattoo", the faithful servant of "Mr. Roarke" (Ricardo Montalban). This series was a great success and, thanks to it, Villechaize became famous and rich, mostly because of his enigmatic and charming smile.
In 1983, he argued with the producers of the show in order to earn as much money as Montalban but, instead, he was fired; he also lost his model-actress wife. The series continued without him but stopped one year later, when the media response meter decreased because of the lack of Tattoo's character!
Villechaize became alcoholic and depressed, so he missed several roles that he was offered. His health problems also increased (mostly suffering from ulcers and a spastic colon), and he nearly died of pneumonia in 1992. On the afternoon of Saturday September 4th, 1993, after having watched a movie, he wrote a note and made a tape recording before shooting himself in his backyard. His common-law wife, Kathy Self, discovered his body and called the ambulance which took him to the Medical Center of North Hollywood where he died at 3:40 pm. Villechaize was cremated and his ashes were scattered off Point Fermin, in Los Angeles.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Donald Barry went from the stage to the screen. After four years of playing villains and henchmen at various studios, Barry got the role that changed his image: Red Ryder in the Republic Pictures serial Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). Although he had appeared in westerns for two years or so, this was the one that kept him there. He acquired the nickname "Red" from his association with the Red Ryder character. After the success of "Red Ryder" Barry starred in a string of westerns for Republic. Studio chief Herbert J. Yates got the idea that Barry could be Republic's version of James Cagney, as he was short and had the same scrappy, feisty nature that Cagney had. Unfortunately, while Barry could in fact be a good actor when he wanted to be -- as he showed in the World War II drama The Purple Heart (1944) -- his "feistiness", combative nature and oversized ego caused him to alienate many of the casts and crews he worked with at Republic (ace serial director William Witney detested him, calling him "the midget", and director John English worked with him once and refused to ever work with him again). Barry made a series of westerns at Republic throughout the 1940s, but by 1950 his career had pretty much come to a halt, and he was reduced to making cheaper and cheaper pictures for bottom-of-the-barrel companies like Lippert and Screen Guild. Barry continued to work and still appeared in westerns up through the 1970s, but they were often in small supporting roles, sometimes unbilled. In 1980 he committed suicide by shooting himself.- Marjorie Battles was born on 5 June 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Lucky Lady (1975), McCloud (1970) and Quincy M.E. (1976). She died on 18 October 1987 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Barry Brown was born on 19 April 1951 in San Jose, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Bad Company (1972), Piranha (1978) and Daisy Miller (1974). He died on 27 June 1978 in Silver Lake, California, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
Spalding Gray was born on 5 June 1941 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Swimming to Cambodia (1987), Kate & Leopold (2001) and The Killing Fields (1984). He was married to Kathleen Russo and Renée Shafransky. He died on 10 January 2004 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Stunts
- Soundtrack
An American stuntman who, after more than 30 years in the business, moved into acting and became an acclaimed and respected character actor, Richard Farnsworth was a native of Los Angeles. He grew up around horses and as a teenager was offered an opportunity to ride in films. He appeared in horse-racing scenes and cavalry charges unbilled, first as a general rider and later as a stuntman. His riding and stunting skills gained him regular work doubling stars ranging from Roy Rogers to Gary Cooper, and he often doubled the bad guy as well. Although. like most stuntmen, he was occasionally given a line or two of dialogue, it was not until Farnsworth was over 50 that his natural talent for acting and his ease and warmth before the camera became apparent. When he won an Academy Award nomination for his role in Comes a Horseman (1978), it came as a surprise to many in the industry that this "newcomer" had been around since the 1930s. Farnsworth followed his Oscar nomination with a number of finely wrought performances, including The Grey Fox (1982) and The Natural (1984). In 1999 he came out of semi-retirement for a tour-de-force portrayal in The Straight Story (1999).- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Robin McLaurin Williams was born on Saturday, July 21st, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, a great-great-grandson of Mississippi Governor and Senator, Anselm J. McLaurin. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (née Janin), was a former model from Mississippi, and his father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a Ford Motor Company executive from Indiana. Williams had English, German, French, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Robin briefly studied political science at Claremont Men's College and theater at College of Marin before enrolling at The Juilliard School to focus on theater. After leaving Juilliard, he performed in nightclubs where he was discovered for the role of "Mork, from Ork", in an episode of Happy Days (1974). The episode, My Favorite Orkan (1978), led to his famous spin-off weekly TV series, Mork & Mindy (1978). He made his feature starring debut playing the title role in Popeye (1980), directed by Robert Altman.
Williams' continuous comedies and wild comic talents involved a great deal of improvisation, following in the footsteps of his idol Jonathan Winters. Williams also proved to be an effective dramatic actor, receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), and The Fisher King (1991), before winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Good Will Hunting (1997).
During the 1990s, Williams became a beloved hero to children the world over for his roles in a string of hit family-oriented films, including Hook (1991), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Flubber (1997), and Bicentennial Man (1999). He continued entertaining children and families into the 21st century with his work in Robots (2005), Happy Feet (2006), Night at the Museum (2006), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009), Happy Feet Two (2011), and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). Other more adult-oriented films for which Williams received acclaim include The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), The Birdcage (1996), Insomnia (2002), One Hour Photo (2002), World's Greatest Dad (2009), and Boulevard (2014).
On Monday, August 11th, 2014, Robin Williams was found dead at his home in Tiburon, California USA, the victim of an apparent suicide, according to the Marin County Sheriff's Office. A 911 call was received at 11:55 a.m. PDT, firefighters and paramedics arrived at his home at 12:00 p.m. PDT, and he was pronounced dead at 12:02 p.m. PDT.- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Tony Scott was a British-born film director and producer. He was the youngest of three brothers, one of whom is fellow film director Ridley Scott. He was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England to parents Jean and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. As a result of his father's career in the British military, his family moved around a lot. Their mother loved the going to the movies and instilled a love of cinema in her children. At age 16, Tony made his first appearance on screen as 'the boy' in his brother's directorial debut, the short film Boy and Bicycle (1965). In 1969, Tony directed his own short film One of the Missing (1969) about a soldier in the American civil war.
Tony had a talent for art and painting. He spent a year in Leeds College of Art and Design and went on to study for a fine arts degree at the School of Art at the University of Sunderland. He won a scholarship to study for his Masters of fine arts at the Royal College of Art. Following university, he spent several years as a painter. But life as a painter proved a struggle, so he decided to forge a different career path and partnered with Ridley in advertising at Ridley Scott Associates. It was there that he began shooting commercials. In 1971 he wrote, produced and directed Loving Memory however his vampire movie The Hunger (1983) starring Susan Sarandon, David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve wasn't a critical success but it attracted attention from Hollywood. He was asked by producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to direct Top Gun (1986) starring Tom Cruise. He would work again with Cruise on another high adrenaline film Days of Thunder (1990), which proved less successful. He followed the success of Top Gun with the sequel Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) with Eddie Murphy, which was well received.
In 1993, he directed True Romance (1993), which was written by emerging director Quentin Tarantino. Scott had a lot of control over the film and received some great reviews.
Tony has worked five times with actor Denzel Washington with Crimson Tide (1995), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), Deja Vu (2006), Man on Fire (2004) and Scott's final film in the director's chair Unstoppable (2010).
Tony Scott passed away at age 68 on August 19, 2012 in California, USA.- Gig Young was born Byron Barr to parents John and Emma Barr in Minnesota, and raised in Washington, DC, where he developed a passion for theatre while appearing in high school plays. After gaining some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Southern California's Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in "Pancho", a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout, leading to his signing contracts with the studio. Still acting under his given name, Byron Barr, he played bits and extra roles. He experimented with varying screen names because there was already another actor with the same name (see Byron Barr). In 1942, in the picture The Gay Sisters (1942), he was given the role of a character whose name was Gig Young, which he liked well enough to finally adopt it as his permanent stage name. His intermittent roles and, therefore, income, required Young to supplement his income working at a gas station, but success in The Gay Sisters (1942) eventually allowed him the freedom to become a full-time actor. Although service in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II interrupted his ascension, after discharge he quickly established himself as a reliable light leading man, usually the second male lead to stars who were established box office draws. A dramatic part in Come Fill the Cup (1951) resulted in his being nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; a second Supporting Actor nomination followed seven years later for his comedic performance in Teacher's Pet (1958). A prolific television career later complemented his film work. In 1969, his surprisingly seedy portrayal of a dance-marathon emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) finally brought him that Supporting Actor Oscar. A succession of marriages, including one to actress Elizabeth Montgomery, failed. In 1978, only three weeks after marrying German actress Kim Schmidt, Young apparently shot her to death in their New York City apartment and then turned the gun on himself. The precise motivation for the sad and grisly murder-suicide remains unclear. Young was not quite 65, his bride, 31.
- Actor
- Producer
Owen Davis Jr. was born on 6 October 1907 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Bunker Bean (1936), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and The Plot Thickens (1936). He was married to Laina Muroni. He died on 21 May 1949 in Long Island Sound, New York, USA.- Russell Gleason was born on 6 February 1907 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He was an actor, known for All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Fury Below (1936) and A Tenderfoot Goes West (1936). He was married to Cynthia Lindsay. He died on 26 December 1945 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.
After graduating from high school, she married Jack Robbins (Irving Wheeler), but the union lasted a month (the marriage was annulled because Carole was only 15 at the time). The couple remarried in August 1934, and the two headed to California to start a new life. For a while she worked as a dancer and singer, but before long the glitter of show business drew her to Los Angeles.
She won a studio contract with Warner Brothers but was a bit player for the most part in such films as A Star Is Born (1937), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937). The following year started out much the same way, with more bit roles. By 1939, she was getting a few speaking roles, although mostly one-liners, and that year ended much as had the previous two years, with more bit roles; also, she and Wheeler were divorced.
In 1940 she was cast as Loana in the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. (1940); she finally got noticed (the skimpy outfit helped), and her career began moving. She began getting parts in B pictures but didn't star in big productions -- although she had talent, the really good roles were given to the established stars of the day.
Her busiest year was 1942, with roles in Manila Calling (1942), The Powers Girl (1943), A Gentleman at Heart (1942), and three other movies. Unfortunately, critics took little notice of her films, and when they did, reviewers tended to focus on her breathtaking beauty. By the middle 1940s, Carole's career was beginning to short-circuit. Her contract with 20th Century-Fox had been canceled, her marriages to Willis Hunt Jr. and Thomas Wallace had failed, and her current marriage to Horace Schmidlapp was on the skids; all of that plus health problems spelled disaster for her professionally and personally.
Her final two films, Brass Monkey (1948) and The Silk Noose (1948) were released in 1948. On July 5, 1948, Carole committed suicide by taking an overdose of Seconal in her Brentwood Heights, California, home. She was only 29 and had made 49 pictures, most of which were, unfortunately, forgettable. If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance, she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history.- Jill Banner's early life was somewhat nomadic. Her father died when she was 2, and her mother moved from Washington to South Dakota and Iowa before settling in Glendale, California. Jill attended the Hollywood Professional School (one of her classmates was Peggy Lipton). Her debut film, Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967), was shot in 1964 but not released until 1968. When the film finally came out she received rave reviews for her performance as one of a pair of crazed sisters in this dark tale of cannibalism and incest. Between the shooting of the film and its release, Banner did a few films and much TV work. She was regularly used by producer/director Jack Webb in his police shows Dragnet 1967 (1967) and Adam-12 (1968), often playing a blissed-out hippie. In the 1970s she soured on the Hollywood life and moved to New Mexico, where she sold real estate. After a few years, though, she returned to California to try to resume her career. On August 7, 1982, she was driving on the Ventura Freeway, between the Tujunga and Laurel Canyon Blvd. off-ramps, when her car was hit by a truck whose driver was drunk. Not wearing a seat belt, she was ejected from the car and hit her head on the center divider. She went into a coma, and died at a local hospital, never having come out of it. At the time of her death she was employed by Marlon Brando and was developing scripts for him.
- Actor
- Composer
- Writer
Sonny Bono was born on 16 February 1935 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for The Sonny and Cher Show (1976), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Hairspray (1988). He was married to Mary Bono, Susie Coelho, Cher and Donna Rankin. He died on 5 January 1998 in South Lake Tahoe, California, USA.- Goo Ha-Ra was born on 13 January 1991 in Gwangju, Korea. She was an actress, known for City Hunter (2011), It's Okay, That's Love (2014) and Kara: Secret Love (2014). She died on 24 November 2019 in Seoul, South Korea.
- Pamela Susan Courson was born December 22, 1946 in Weed California. She was daughter of Columbus "Corky" Brimer Courson and Pearl "Penny" Courson. She had an elder sister, Judy.
In the book "Angels Dance and Angels die" by Patricia Butler it says: "Kindergarten, the first day of school at Cambridge Elementary in Orange, California. [...] One little girl with carrot red hair and freckles was running away from the door where the teacher stood, but she didn't escape. She fell down and scraped her knee. It started to bleed, but she didn't cry. She kind of yelled, no tears, just bellowed. That little girl was Pamela Courson". This is Charlene Estes Enzler's written account of her first day of kindergarten. By the time Pam reached high school in 1960, she had no close friends. Fashion seemed to he a big part of Pam's life. Preach Lyrela recalls: "Pamela, at a social event - she would stop the party! People would just look at her because she was wearing the type of clothing that nobody else would dare to. She was always two or three years ahead of what was coming out in Orange County. She was very white and she wore stark white makeup, with the sorrowful stress on the eyes. She certainly had a mind of her own and was very different." Annette Burden liked Pam for the very fact she wasn't a typical teen: "Everyone else I knew was just Orange County, run-of-the-mill people, but I thought Pamela was absolutely great! She was a wild one and just had a wonderful sense of style and adventure, with this spark that was so exciting and fun. I thought she was really smart, but maybe other people didn't because she had that kind of mysterious thing about her. But I knew she was smart because she was so funny, her humor was so wry. Charlene Enzler remembers Pam in high school (ca.1962): "We all wore pastels and plaids, with full skirts and starched petticoats, but suddenly in our junior year, here was Pamela dressed all in black, her once-red hair dyed jet black as well." While beatniks may have been prowling New York's East Village for years by that time, they hadn't yet made it to Orange County. Pamela Courson was their first. In 1963 Charlene saw Pam for the last time and she realized Pam was different from the most of the kids in Orange, but was also quite nice. Pam was wearing her beatnik outfit and her hair (by this time back to her natural color) was worn long and parted straight down the middle "like a hippie". Pam left Orange High School in her junior year and transferred out of the district to Capistrano Union High School about twenty miles south of Orange.
In any event, Jim Morrison called Pam his "cosmic mate" and dedicated his self-published books of poetry to her, as well as songs such as "Love Street". Although they were deeply in love, their relationship was tumultuous and they also fought and abused each other. She was the one and only woman who could and would stand up to Jim, for she could dish it out to him as well as he could to her. They both had flings on the side with other people but still they came back to each other in the end. Although they never married, Pam took the name Morrison later on in their relationship.
Pam arrived in Los Angeles in 1966 when she was 19 and she met Mirandi Babitz, who became and important role model and a friend. According to Ray Manzarek, Pam met the Doors at the Sunset Strip club The London Fog early 1966: "Pam walked into the Fog and john Densmore certainly put the make on her and for the next week or so continued to put the make on her. I don't know what happened with that; I'm certain he would have loved to consummate the relationship, though I don't think they ever did. Whithin about one or two-week period Jim and Pam had looked into each other's eyes and realized that it wasn't going to be John Densmore at all, it was going to be Jim and Pam." The same striking looks that had made Pam an outcast in Orange served her well in Los Angeles. Ray Manzarek remembers Pam bringing a hot rod magazine into the London Fog one day shortly after she and Jim had started seeing each other. "She'd been coming to the club on sort of a relatively frequent basis, and the relationship was blossoming, and she brought a magazine in and was rather proud to show everybody that she was indeed on the cover of a magazine. She was a babe, a hot babe on a red car. As I recall she had on a two-piece bathing suit. It didn't do Pam justice, that's for sure. Didn't capture the sweetness of her." Mirandi recalls the meeting of Pam in the fall of 1966. "Pam and I were both taking art classes at Los Angeles City College. We were the two obviously hippie girls in this class - I had long straight brown hair with bangs and she had long straight red hair with bangs. She was real cute, a darling little thing. so we started sitting together and talking to each other and we became friends." The photographer Paul Ferrara remembers Pam as having "a fairy-tale quality, she had that persona. I think that's what Jim liked about her. she was like one of those people who's so blessed to begin with, whether it's beauty or whatever inside her, I think they're impervious and nothing really hurts them. they kind of walk around with a glowing shield. Pam was one of those."
In early 1967, when The Doors returned from New York, Jim and Pam decided to take the next logical step in their relationship by moving together.The couple moved into one of three small apartments in a house on Rothdell Trail, perced on a hillside just adobe the Country Store. A number of other stars of the music scene lived in the neighborhood as well, such as David Crosby, John and Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot and Frank Zappa. There was a feeling of community and creativity that flowed through the area. Pam testified, in writing: "Jim and I had discussed marriage on several occasions before this trip [Colorado tour, 1967], bu felt, as did his managers, that the attendant publicity to a publicly registered marriage would have a detrimental effect upon the image they were trying to develop on him".
On Wednesday, June 26, 1968, Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson went to Los Angeles City Hall and took out what was rumored to be their second marriage license, though the first one, said to have been picked up in Mexico shortly after the couple first met, no one remembers ever actually seeing. But any thoughts of a June wedding expired along with the marriage license, which was allowed to languish and die, unused. That year, Pam met Christopher Jones, an actor who had lots of similarities with Jim Morrison and had just starred in the youth-oriented film "Wild in the Strets" and they dated for a short time during June and July 1968. When The Doors went to tour Europe Pam came along, choosing mostly to stay in Londonwhile the band toured. Jim and Pam seemed content enough together there. Ray was impressed by the domestic bliss the couple seemed to have fallen into at their furnished flat on London's Eton Square. "We visited them before we left London," says Manzarek, speaking of himself and his wife, Dorothy. "Jim and Pam made us a wonderful breakfast, a full English breakfast [...] It was the most domestic I'd ever seen them. And I thought, This is going to work out! This could work out! This is good!" But it wasn't good for long. Back in the States, Jim began rehearsals for the group's new album The Soft Parade, and Pam once again began seeing Christopher Jones, who went to London with her for the filming of Looking glass with Anthony Hopkins. they stayed at the London Hilton and for weeks everything was good until Christopher Jones wrote a letter to his ex-wife and a furious Pam left him. By November the Doors embarked a tour in the States and Pam hadn't come home yet. Without telling anyone where he was going, Jim went to London to get Pam back. When he located her, the couple reconciled on at least a provisional basis.
In 1971, following the recording of L.A. Woman, Jim decided to take some time off and moved to Paris with Pam, in March. He had visited the city the previous summer and seemed content to write and explore the place. They took up residence in an apartment at 17 rue Beautreillis. Once in Paris, Morrison gained a great deal of weight and shaved off his beard. He admired the city's architecture and would go for long walks through the city. Once there, Pam encouraged him to write poetry. Paris was proving to be good for Jim, and in matter of weeks his physical appearance reflected that benefit. He and Pam were living without pressures, without schedules, traveling anywhere they liked, coming back only when it pleased them to do so. Later, remembering an excursion from Paris to Morocco, Pam said: "I woke up one morning and saw this handsome man by the pool, talking to two young American girls. I fell instantly in love with him. Then I realized it was Jim. I hadn't recognized him. He had got up early and shaved his beard, and he was so lean from losing so much weight, he seemed a new man. It was so nice to fall in love again with the man I was already in love with." Jim had also made the first tentative steps towards bridging the chasm that had so long existed between him and his parents. Alain Ronay, Jim's French-born friend from UCLA, stayed with Jim and Pam in Paris for a few weeks and remembers an evening Jim spent recounting affectionate, funny stories about his father. Pam used to call the Morrisons to let them know that she and Jim were looking forward to seeing them as soon as they got back to the States. For the first time, Jim began talking about having children. Pam loved to travel so while in Paris they went to Spain, Corsica and they planned to go to London and Switzerland. Sadly the excursion to London was cut short when Jim's asthma once again flared up. On July 2, 1971 Jim and Pam went to see a movie. After the movie, they returned to their apartment in Paris. Jim went to bed and awoke sometime later coughing and complaining of chest pains. He then decided to take a bath. At approximately 5:00 a.m. on July 3, 1971, Pam found Jim dead in their bathroom. Per the stipulation in his will, which stated that he was "an unmarried person", Courson inherited his entire fortune, yet lawsuits against the estate would tie up her quest for inheritance for the next two years. After Pamela received her share of Morrison's royalties, she never renewed contact with the remaining Doors members.
After Jim's passing, Pam returned to the States and went to live with her friend publicist Diane Gardiner who kept Pam out of the public eyes with the help of the journalist Ellen Sander. Ellen remembers Pam: "She had a very lyrical, high-pitched voice; she was pretty, she was sweet - I never heard her say any unkind word about anybody, which impressed me. sweet-needy. That's my description of her. She was sweet and needy." Pam told Ellen, who was seven months pregnant: "I wish we'd had a baby. I wish I was pregnant too". Ellen recalls: "She was devastated about what had happened and what was going to happen to her." Pam stayed with Ellen for weeks at her home in Sausalito, but then she moved with Diane Gardiner at Muir Woods and with Sage as well, the golden retriever she had shared with Jim and she usually visited her old friend January Jensen who lived near by. She stayed there over a year. January Jensen recalls: "Pam once told me "You know, I just have no desire to live without Jim; I can't live without him" and I said "C'mon now!" and I gave her a big hug, I knew what she was feeling". As a twenty-four-year-old in Paris, Pam had held the world in her hands, facing an ever brightening future with the man she loved. At twenty-five, she was back in California, alone, left with nothing but a dry handful of torturous memories and half live dreams. And regrets, so many regrets.
Randy Ralston was a twenty-three year old film student attending at UCLA who met Pam at Cafe Figaro in Beverly Hills. Randy Ralson Recalls: "As soon as we [Randy and his friend George] sat down at our table, I noticed a girl sitting alone, giving me some eye dalliance. So I immediately got up and went over and introduced myself and said, "would you like to join us?" She was the slender, attractive young woman with her vivid red hair cut just above her shoulders. Pam told them she had some films Jim did in their trips to Europe but she hadn't a projector, so Randy - with the projector in his hand- took Pam at her house. He recalls: "She had a lovely house, a big Spanish-style place. Not only is she beautiful, but a rich girl to boot." They spent long time watching the Super 8 films again and again and Pam invited Randy to stay all night at her home. The next morning seemed idyllic to Randy: "We woke up in the morning and she fixed breakfast. She fixed bacon and eggs and squeezed orange juice, and we sat and fed the birds outside the window." That day Pam went to live with Randy. "We had great time, we cooked, we sat in the backyard. We would eat gourmet food, we would go to the movies, we would walk Sage in the park. I like to do yoga, and she would encourage me to keep up my routine of morning and evening meditation, and going to play tennis and stuff like that. It was pretty idyllic." they spent great time together until one day they heard a song by The doors on the radio, then Pam got depressed and after that, Pam's mood would brighten temporarily, but then she would sink into depression once again. Randy Ralston didn't realized Pam was Jim Morrison's widow so he didn't understand her, but he got tired of her changing moods and they split up. Pam left home and went to live in an apartment she found on Sycamore. Pam call him and she asked him if he wanted to go with her to a concert at the Palladium. Randy Ralston went with Diane Gardiner to pick up Pam. Randy recalls: "She was all dressed up and looked unbelievably gorgeous. It was bizarre. Diane would be whispering in my ear as people came up to pay homage to Pamela, the rock and roll princess. She really wanted me to know who I'd thrown out of my house." Little by little Randy met again with Pam to see his and her films, to listen to the music, to parties... At one point Randy and Pam went to Las Vegas with an other couple and they talked about getting married: "We always were really very enamored of each other, but I don't think anybody could fill the boots of Jim Morrison. I don't think there was any guy who could do that in her life for her." In December 1973 Randy and Pam were preparing things to make a camping trip, they were very happy until Pam talked about her family. She had made a trip to Utah to meet her sister Judy and she had told to her parents bad things about Pam, Pam felt so hurt and she decides not to spent Christmas with her family, Randy tried to convince Pam to go with her family but she had made the decision of staying with him. Pam turned twenty-seven that month.
On April 25, 1974, Pam died of a heroin overdose at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. She was twenty-seven, the same age at which Jim Morrison died. Her parents intended that she be buried next to Morrison at Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and listed this location as the place of burial on her death certificate, but due to legal complications with transporting the body to France, her parents had her remains buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, under the name "Pamela Susan Morrison". After her death, her parents Columbus and Penny inherited Morrison's entire fortune, but their executor ship of the estate was later contested by Morrison's parents, George and Clara Morrison. In her funeral, The Doors told that nobody wore black clothes. Ray Manzarek played some songs that Jim composed thinking about Pam such as "Orange Country Girl". Nobody commented any thing related to Jim or Pam's life and death, they just remain there, in silence. - Music Artist
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James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American poet, singer, and songwriter from Florida. He was the lead vocalist of the rock band "The Doors" (1965-1973), and has been cited as "one of the most influential frontmen in rock history". Morrison recorded a total of six studio albums with the Doors, all of which sold well. Morrison struggled with alcohol dependency for most of his adult life, and displayed erratic behavior both on and off the stage. He was described as "A Jekyll and Hyde" by record producer Paul Rothchild, due to often displaying contradictory character traits in his interactions with others. Morrison died unexpectedly in Paris, France at the age of 27. No autopsy was ever performed, and the cause of Morrison's death remains disputed. His mysterious death has inspired a large number of theories, and has fascinated people for decades.
In 1943, Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, a city located 72 miles (116 kilometers) southeast of Orlando. Melbourne emerged as a new settlement in the 1870s. It was named after Melbourne, Australia, because the new town's first postmaster had spend most of his life in the Australian city. Morrison's parents were George Stephen Morrison (1919-2008) and his wife Clara Virginia Clarke (1919-2005). Morrison's father was a career officer of the United States Navy, and would eventually reach the rank of rear admiral. George is primarily remembered for his service in the Vietnam War. The Morrisons were part of a Scottish-American family that had been living in the United States since the 18th century. Genealogical research has indicated that they were descendants of Clan Morrison, a Scottish clan which is primarily associated with the Isle of Lewis and Harris.
Morrison experienced the typical nomadic life of a military brat, as his family never settled permanently in any location. At various points in his childhood, Morrison lived in San Diego, in northern Virginia, in Kingsville, Texas, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1957, Morrison started his high school years in Alameda, California. In 1959, he was transferred to the George Washington High School, located in Alexandria, Virginia. He graduated from there in June 1961. During his last years of high school, Morrison maintained a grade average of 88. He reportedly tested in the top 0.1% with an IQ of 149.
Following his high school graduation, Morrison went to live with his paternal grandparents in Clearwater, Florida. He initially attended the St. Petersburg Junior College, which had been operating as a private, non-profit institution since the late 1920s. In 1962, Morrison started attending the Florida State University (FSU), located in Tallahassee. In September 1963, he was first arrested for the police. He had been found drunk at a home football game, and was charged with disturbing the peace.
In 1964, Morrison was transferred to the film program at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He enrolled at a class which studied the works of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), and reportedly developed a fascination with surrealist theatre. In 1965, Morrison completed his undergraduate degree at UCLA's film school. He refused to attend the graduation ceremony, and the University mailed his diploma to his mother.
Following his university graduation, Morrison followed a bohemian lifestyle in Venice Beach, California. He lived on the rooftop of a building, and wrote song lyrics without having a chance to perform them. In the summer of 1965, Morrison and his recent acquaintance Ray Manzarek decided to form a rock band. They soon recruited the guitarist Robby Krieger and the drummer John Densmore. Morrison decided to name the band "The Doors", after the autobiographical book "The Doors of Perception" (1954) by Aldous Huxley. The name of the book was a reference to using "psychedelic drugs as facilitators of mystical insight".
Morrison soon emerged as the primary lyricist of the band, though Krieger wrote or co-wrote several of their hit songs. Morrison typically avoided using music instruments in live performances, though he learned to use both the maracas and the tambourine. In June 1966, the band were the opening act at the nightclub "Whisky a Go Go" in West Hollywood. During their performances there, Morrison interacted with the Irish singer Van Morrison (1945-), and studied aspects of Van's stage persona and stagecraft. He eventually incorporated several of these aspects into his own stage persona.
In November 1966, Morrison and the other members of the band produced the promotional film "Break On Through (To the Other Side)", named after the title of their first single. They would continue to create short music films throughout the initial years of the band. In 1967, the band signed a contract with the record company Elektra Records. The company would promote their songs to nationwide. The band had its breakthrough hit in the summer of 1967, with the single "Light My Fire". It spent three weeks at the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The band was soon booked to perform two of their songs in the variety television series "The Ed Sullivan Show". The show's censors insisted on changes to "Light My Fire", due to the show's explicit references to drug use. The band feigned compliance, but instead used the explicit version of the song. The resulting controversy caused the cancellation of their six further bookings for television appearances. However, their popularity among rock fans increased.
In September 1967, the band released their second album "Strange Days". It reached the 3rd place number on the US Billboard 200, and earned favorable reviews by the music press. The bands distinctive blend of blues and dark psychedelic rock had turned them into one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. However, Morrison would soon gain notoriety for different reasons. He was arrested on stage in New Haven, Connecticut, after narrating to the audience his recent encounter with a police officer who had maced him. The local police charged him with indecency and public obscenity, though the charges were eventually dropped. Morrison was the first rock performer to be arrested onstage during a live performance.
In September 1968, the Doors played in Europe for the first time. They gave four performances at the Roundhouse, London. Their performances were filmed by Granada Television for the television documentary "The Doors Are Open", which introduced the band to a wider British audience. As the band was gaining international popularity, the members increasingly took note of Morrison's self-destructive behavior. They were aware that he was a heavy drinker, but they realized that he started regularly appearing inebriated in their recording sessions.
By early 1969, Morrison had gained weight. He decided to stop wearing leather pants and concho belts, and to dress casually instead. He also ditched his typically clean-shaven look, and grew a beard for the first time. On March 1, 1969, Morrison increased his own reputation for rebellious behavior. While performing at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, he encouraged the audience to start a riot and threatened to expose his penis on stage. Within days, six warrants for his arrest were issued by the Dade County Police department. One on them on charges of indecent exposure.
Due to Morrison's ongoing legal problems, many of the Doors' scheduled concerts had to be canceled. On September 20, 1970, Morrison was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity in a jury trial in Miami. In October 30, he was officially sentenced to imprisonment for 6 months and a fine of 500 dollars. Morrison remained free on a bond of 50,000 dollars. He commented in a press interview that the American judicial system favors the wealthy, and that (in his words) "if you have money you generally don't go to jail".
Morrison's last album with "The Doors" was "L.A. Woman". It was recorded between December 1970 and January 1971, and eventually released in April 1971. The album was heavily influenced by the blues genre, even more so than their previous works. It was co-produced by the veteran sound engineer Bruce Botnick. The album peaked at the 9th place on the Billboard 200, and the 28th place on the UK Albums Charts. Its most popular song was "Riders on the Storm", which peaked at the 14th place on the U.S Billboard Hot 100.
After finishing the recording of the album, Morrison announced to his band-mates that he planned to move to Paris, France. They had no objection to his decision. In March 1971, Morrison joined his longtime girlfriend Pamela Courson (1946-1974) at her rented apartment in Rue Beautreillis. This Paris street was noted as the former residence of the poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). While staying in Paris, Morrison shaved his beard and lost some weight.
On July 3, 1971, Courson found Morison dead in the bathtub of their apartment at approximately 6:00 a.m. No autopsy was performed, as it was not required by French law. The official cause of death was heart failure, though this was just an educated guess. There were initial rumors of an accidental heroin overdose, but no evidence could confirm them. Morrison was buried at "Père Lachaise Cemetery", the largest cemetery in Paris and the most visited necropolis in the world. The cemetery was founded by the emperor Napoleon in 1804, and houses the remains of several famous writers and artists. Morrison has continued to inspire musicians for decades, and has repeatedly been cited as a main inspiration for the gothic rock genre.- Donda West was born on 12 July 1949 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. She was married to Ray West. She died on 10 November 2007 in Marina del Rey, California, USA.
- Otto Matieson was born on 27 March 1893 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was an actor, known for The Maltese Falcon (1931), Behind Closed Doors (1929) and Scaramouche (1923). He was married to Isabel La Mal. He died on 19 February 1932 in Safford, Arizona, USA.
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Anna Nicole Smith was born on 28 November 1967 in Houston, Texas, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), Be Cool (2005) and Illegal Aliens (2007). She was married to J. Howard Marshall II and Billy Smith. She died on 8 February 2007 in Hollywood, Florida, USA.- Actor
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River Phoenix was born River Jude Bottom in Madras, Oregon. His mother, Arlyn (Dunetz), a Bronx-born secretary, and his father, John Bottom, a carpenter, met in California in 1968. They worked as itinerant fruit pickers, and later joined the Children of God religious group (John was originally Catholic, while Arlyn was born Jewish). By the time River was two, they were living in South America, where John was the sect's Archbishop of Venezuela. They later left the group and, in 1977, moved back to the United States, changing their last name to "Phoenix". They lived with River's maternal grandparents in Florida, and later moved to Los Angeles. His parents encouraged all of their children to get into movies and, by age ten, River was acting professionally on TV. His film debut was in Explorers (1985), followed rapidly by box-office successes with Stand by Me (1986) and The Mosquito Coast (1986), and as young Indiana in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). His role as Danny Pope in Running on Empty (1988) earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His best role was probably Mike, the hustler in My Own Private Idaho (1991).
A dedicated animal-rights activist and environmentalist, River was a strict vegetarian and a member of PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). River was a talented musician as well as an actor, and he played guitar, sang, and wrote songs for his band, Aleka's Attic, which also included his sister Rain Phoenix, while living in Gainsville, Florida. Although the band never released its own album, their song "Across the Way" can be found on PeTA's "Tame Yourself" album, used to fight animal abuse. River was in the middle of filming Dark Blood (2012), playing the character Boy when he died. The film couldn't be finished due to too many unfilmed crucial scenes. His mother was later sued.
River died of acute multiple drug intoxication involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine at age 23 outside the Viper Room, Johnny Depp's Los Angeles club.- Actor
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Bryan Englund was born on 21 June 1955 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Prowler (1981), High Anxiety (1977) and Crazy Mama (1975). He died on 25 February 1986 in New York City, New York, USA.- Robert E. Hutchins was born March 29th, 1925, in Tacoma, Washington. He was born to James Hutchins and Olga Hutchins (nee Roe). Robert was a very outgoing boy with a charming personality, because friends persuaded James and Olga to go to a Hollywood photographer and get his picture taken. The photographer was impressed by Robert's intelligence, and asked to take a few feet of film of him. The results were so good that the film ended up in the projection room at Hal Roach Studios. Hal Roach decided the boy would be a good addition to his "Our Gang" short films, and signed him to a five year contract.
On his first day at the studio, Robert didn't have an identity for his part in the movies, and he was running around so much that he began to wheeze. Such led to the coining of the "Wheezer" name, one he carried for the rest of his time in Our Gang. Robert played the perky, tag-along little brother that was always anxious to be part of the mischief that the gang was getting into. He played such a part in both the silent films and the talkies.
Jackie Cooper recalls, "You'd go to play with Wheezer, and his father would pull him away, very competitive. I didn't get a satisfactory answer from my mother or grandmother as to why, but he was to be left alone. I guess his father was trying to make him a star or something. Obviously it never happened as it did for Spanky or some of the other kids."
In trying to make Robert a star, his father malnourished him, and isolated him from the other kids when not filming. James had a plan to keep him small and employable by underfeeding him, and wanted to ensure that Bobby and his siblings never learned that normal kids got a lot more to eat than they did. Nobody ever intervened upon the children's behalf. It's made worse by the fact that his plan backfired. While Robert was incredibly photogenic, and had some fine moments on screen, he looked and acted more like the slow-witted, malnourished child he was, as he aged. Sharper boys were given the leading parts, while Robert spent the last portion of his contract as a background player.
After he left Our Gang with 1933's "Mush and Milk", his film career was essentially over -- with an appearance in Pie for Two, Yoo-Hoo, and Strange Roads outside of his Our Gang shorts -- and he did no more acting after that. His mother and father divorced, and he, his brother James, and his mother moved back to Washington. They lived in a household with their grandmother, and Olga's new husband.
Robert got a job as a gas station attendant in 1942, and enrolled as an air cadet sometime in 1943, with speculation being that he enrolled sometime in August. He was very close to completing his advanced flight training, until a very unfortunate event occurred May 17th, 1945, and he perished. He was killed in a mid-air collision while trying to land a North American AT-6D Texan, at Merced Army Air Field Base in California. The other pilot involved received only minor damage, and landed safely. - Actor
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Bobby Buntrock was born on 4 August 1952 in Denver, Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for Hazel (1961), Burke's Law (1963) and Bus Stop (1961). He died on 7 April 1974 in Keystone, South Dakota, USA.- Nora Marlowe was born on 5 September 1915 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Westworld (1973) and Emergency! (1972). She was married to James McCallion. She died on 31 December 1977 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Princess Diana was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and the mother of Prince William and Prince Harry. Diana's activism and glamour made her an international icon and earned her an enduring popularity.
Diana was born into the British nobility and grew up close to the royal family on their Sandringham estate. She did not distinguish herself academically, but was talented in music, dance, and sports.
Diana came to prominence in 1981 upon her engagement to Prince Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II, after a brief courtship. Their wedding took place at St Paul's Cathedral in 1981 and made her Princess of Wales, a role in which she was enthusiastically received by the public. The couple had two sons, the princes William and Harry, who were then second and third in the line of succession to the British throne. The couple separated in 1992, soon after the breakdown of their relationship became public knowledge. The details of their marital difficulties became increasingly publicized, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1996.
As Princess of Wales, Diana undertook royal duties on behalf of the Queen and represented her at functions across the Commonwealth realms. She was celebrated in the media for her unconventional approach to charity work. Her patronages initially centered on children and youth but she later became known for her involvement with AIDS patients and campaign for the removal of landmines. She also raised awareness and advocated ways to help people affected with cancer and mental illness. Considered to be very photogenic, she was a leader of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s. Media attention and public mourning were extensive after her death in a car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997 and televised funeral. Her legacy has had a deep impact on the royal family and British society. - Actor
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Vic Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York, to Jean (Kress) and Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Morrow dropped out of high school at 17 to join the U.S. Navy. When he left the Navy, he used the G.I. Bill to study pre-law at Florida State. While Morrow was working on his degree in Law, he also took part in a school play and found that he preferred stage acting to courtroom acting. When he went to New York, Morrow enrolled in the Actors' Workshop to improve his skills. After graduating, he was cast in the summer stock production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". His screen debut came when he was signed by MGM to play a tough-talking, surly street punk in Blackboard Jungle (1955). The good news was that he was now in the movies, but the bad news was that he became typecast as a heavy. Disappointed with this situation, Morrow left MGM after a few years and headed back to school to study directing at USC. He made some appearances on television and in 1962 found a role that brought him fame and made him the "hero": the TV series Combat! (1962), in which he played Sgt. Chip Saunders, veteran squad leader. Due to his demands, the show quickly went from an alternating showcase between platoon leader Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) and Sgt. Saunders to one featuring mainly Saunders. With the success of the show, Morrow put to use what he had learned at USC and directed some episodes. In 1965 he and his wife divorced, and two years later the series ended. These two events put him into a personal and professional slide. By 1969 he began almost a decade of making made-for-TV movies, with an occasional foray into features. Most of his roles, though, put him back as a "heavy", although he did have a good part as a tough L.A. cop going up against out-of-town mobsters in a two-part episode of Police Story (1973) that was later released as a telefeature. While he worked in the theater and looked forward to the big screen, most of his roles were in "B" pictures such as Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) and Treasure of Matecumbe (1976). He got good reviews playing Walter Matthau's nemesis in the hit comedy The Bad News Bears (1976), but was not involved in any of the following sequels, and he seemed to be stuck in a rut of "B" features and average made-for-TV films. With the failure of his second marriage, the death of his mother and the scarcity of good parts, Morrow hit the bottle, which did his career even less good. In 1982, however, he refocused his drive and made a comeback in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), but was unfortunately killed on the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 in a tragic, freak accident on the set while filming a scene involving a helicopter which crashed right on top of him and two young children.
Vic was the father of Carrie Ann Morrow and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.- Eleonora von Mendelssohn was born on 12 January 1900 in Berlin, Germany. She was an actress, known for Black Hand (1950). She was married to Martin Kosleck, Rudolf Forster, Emmerich von Jeszenesky (Hungarian aristocrat) and Edwin Fischer (Swiss pianist). She died on 24 January 1951 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Anissa Jones was an American child actress of Lebanese descent. She is primarily remembered for the role of the orphan girl Buffy Davis in the hit sitcom "Family Affair" (1966-1971). The series lasted for 5 seasons and 138 episodes. Jones' career rapidly declined following the end of the sitcom. She died due to "combined drug intoxication" when only 18-years-old.
In 1958, Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana. West Lafayette is a college town, primarily known as the home of Purdue University. Jones' father was the engineer John Paul Jones, who was at that time a faculty board member at Purdue University. Jones' mother was Mary Paula Tweel, a Lebanese-American zoology student.
Jones spend the first few years of her life in Charleston, West Virginia, where her family had settled. Around 1963, the Jones family moved to Playa Del Rey, California. Her father had accepted a job in aerospace engineering in California, and was eager to relocate to the West Coast. The marriage of Jones's parents soon deteriorated, and they were already divorced by 1965.
In 1964, Jones made her debut at television commercials. She was only 6-years-old at the time. She begun pursuing acting roles in 1965. She had her big break in 1966, when cast in a co-starring role in the new sitcom "Family Affair". She was 8-years-old at the time, but she was cast in the role of a 6-year-old. Jones was unusually short for her age, and she reportedly looked younger than her actual age.
Jones soon became a popular child actress, and she made several guest appearances in other television series. She served as a guest host in the variety show "The Hollywood Palace",. She was also interviewed in the talk shows "The Mike Douglas Show" and "The Merv Griffin Show". She made her film debut in 1969, with a small part in the drama film "The Trouble with Girls". The film's main star was Elvis Presley, in one of his last acting roles. The film depicted the murder of a pharmacist in Iowa, and the efforts of a band manager to profit from the crime.
"Family Affair" ended in 1971, leaving Jones without a regular role for the first time in her acting career. Despite auditioning for various roles over the following years, she was nearly always rejected. Her acting career ended at the age of 12. In 1976, Jones was still living in California and had a regular boyfriend.
On August 27, 1976, Jones went partying with her friends in the beach town of Oceanside, California. The following day, Jones was found dead at the home of Helen Hennessy, a close friend. An autopsy revealed that she had consumed a combination of cocaine, PCP, Quaalude, and Seconal. A small vial of blue liquid was found next to her corpse, but the police could not determine what it was. Jones was given a small, private funeral service. Her remains were cremated, and her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.
Following Jones' death, Dr. Don Carlos Moshos was arrested for illegally prescribing Seconal to Jones. Moshos died in late December 1976, while still awaiting his trial. In 1979, a court decision forced Moshos' estate to make compensations payments to Jones' surviving relatives. Jones' last surviving relative (her mother) died in January 2012. Jones is long gone, but is still fondly remembered for her sitcom role. - Actor
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Charles Rocket was born on 28 August 1949 in Bangor, Maine, USA. He was an actor, known for Dumb and Dumber (1994), Dances with Wolves (1990) and Titan A.E. (2000). He was married to Mary Elizabeth (Beth) Crellin. He died on 7 October 2005 in Canterbury, Connecticut, USA.- Grant Richards was born on 21 December 1911 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Night of Mystery (1937), My Old Kentucky Home (1938) and The Untouchables (1959). He was married to Jean Stevens and Joan Valerie. He died on 4 July 1963 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Karen Carpenter moved with her family to Downey, California, in 1963. Karen's older brother, Richard Carpenter, decided to put together an instrumental trio with him on the piano, Karen on the drums and their friend Wes Jacobs on the bass and tuba. In a battle of the bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966, the group won first place and landed a contract with RCA Records. However, RCA did not see a future in jazz tuba, and the contract was short-lived.
Karen and Richard formed another band, Spectrum, with four other fellow students from California State University at Long Beach that played several gigs before disbanding. In 1969, Karen and Richard made several demo music tapes and shopped them around to different record companies; they were eventually offered a contract with A&M Records. Their first hit was a reworking of The Beatles hit "Ticket to Ride", followed by a re-recorded version of Burt Bacharach's "Close to You", which sold a million copies.
Soon Richard and Karen became one of the most successful groups of the early 1970s, with Karen on the drums and lead vocals and Richard on the piano with backup vocals. They won three Grammy Awards, embarked on a world tour, and landed their own TV variety series in 1971, titled Make Your Own Kind of Music! (1971).
In 1975 the story came out when The Carpenters were forced to cancel a European tour because the gaunt Karen was too weak to perform. Nobody knew that Karen was at the time suffering from anorexia nervosa, a mental illness characterized by obsessive dieting to a point of starvation. In 1976 she moved out of her parents' house to a condo of her own.
While her brother Richard was recovering from his Quaalude addiction, Karen decided to record a solo album in New York City in 1979 with producer Phil Ramone. Encouraged by the positive reaction to it in New York, Karen was eager to show it to Richard and the record company in California, who were nonplussed. The album was shelved.
In 1980, she married real estate developer Thomas J. Burris. However, the unhappy marriage really only lasted a year before they separated. (Karen was to sign the divorce papers the day she died).
Shortly afterward, she and brother Richard were back in the recording studio, where they recorded their hit single "Touch Me When We're Dancing". However, Karen was unable to shake her depression as well as her eating disorder, and after realizing she needed help, she spent most of 1982 in New York City undergoing treatment. By 1983, Karen was starting to take control of her life and planning to return to the recording studio and to make public appearances again. In February of 1983, she went to her parents' house to sort through some old clothes she kept there when she collapsed in a walk-in closet from cardiac arrest. She was only 32. Doctors revealed that her long battle with anorexia nervosa had stressed her heart to the breaking point.- Paul Mace was born on 4 April 1950 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Paradise Alley (1978), The Lords of Flatbush (1974) and The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He was married to Judy Ann Jordan. He died on 12 August 1983 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.
- This tall, dazzling, yet reserved and sensitive foreign import was born Giovanna Scoglio in Liverpool, England but moved to Sicily with her aristocratic Sicilian father and Irish mother at three months of age. She migrated to New York at age 14 and attended Bayside (Queens) High School, graduating in 1952. She worked various jobs as a file clerk and airline reservations taker while studying with Stella Adler and the Actors Studio. Appearing as a contestant on a television game show, a Universal Studios agent happened to spot the young beauty and immediately placed the young beauty under contract in 1954.
It did not take long before she moved up the Hollywood ladder. After only a couple of bit parts, Gia began earning good notices for her "second lead" roles. Her performance in The Price of Fear (1956) led to even better love interest parts in The Garment Jungle (1957) with Kerwin Mathews, Don't Go Near the Water (1957) opposite Glenn Ford, The Two-Headed Spy (1958) with Jack Hawkins, The Angry Hills (1959) starring Robert Mitchum, and I Aim at the Stars (1960) [aka: Wernher von Braun] with Curd Jürgens. Gia's best known film role came as the mute Anna, the ill-fated Greek resistance fighter, in the classic all-star epic film, The Guns of Navarone (1961) headed up by Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn.
From there things began to spiral downhill for Gia personally and professionally. Riding on the coattails of her ever-present glamour and cinematic success were deep-rooted insecurities. Following the loss of her beloved mother, she fell into acute depression and began to drink heavily as compensation which led to a few arrests. She eventually lost her contract at Universal due to her unreliability, which forced her to seek work overseas. Her marriage to handsome actor Don Burnett, whom she co-starred with in the obscure adventure The Triumph of Robin Hood (1962) [The Triumph of Robin Hood] burnt itself out, and, at one point, she threw herself off London's Waterloo Bridge in desperation. She would have drowned in the Thames River had a passing cab driver not plucked her out of the water in time.
Gia's bouts with depression grew so severe that she was forced to undergo frequent psychiatric observations. In the midst of things she tried to pick herself up emotionally by studying painting and staying close to her younger sister, actress Tina Scala. It was too late. On April 30, 1972, it all ended for Gia Scala. She was found dead in her Hollywood Hills bedroom following an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. This incredible beauty who never reached her full potential in Hollywood instead became another Tinseltown statistic. - Actress
- Writer
A slender, striking, red-haired, freckle-faced American leading lady, Mary Elizabeth Hartman was born in Boardman, Ohio on December 23, 1943, as the middle of three children born to building contractor Bill C. Hartman (May 7, 1914, Ohio - October 26, 1964, Youngstown, Ohio) and housewife Claire Mullaly (October 13, 1918, Youngstown, Ohio - October 28, 1997, Youngstown, Ohio). Hartman had an older sister named Janet and a younger brother named William. Hartman grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and appeared in the play "A Clearing in the Woods" in the Youngstown Playhouse.
After graduating from Boardman High School in 1959, Hartman took a job at a Brooks Brothers store in Cleveland, and then attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh in 1961, where she met her future husband Gill Dennis two years later. While in summer school in 1963, Hartman participated in "Bus Stop" with Ann B. Davis, who suggested that Hartman try Broadway. In 1964, Hartman left for New York, where she starred in the play "Everybody Out, the Castle is Sinking". While in New York, she landed the role of Selina D'Arcy, a blind, abused, uneducated white girl who falls in love with a compassionate black man played by Sidney Poitier in the racially charged drama "A Patch of Blue (1965)". For this role, she was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe award. A week after she finished that film, Hartman began six months on location in New York as an upperclass collegiate in "The Group (1966)". Hartman married Dennis in 1968.
Other roles followed, such as a go-go dancer in Francis Ford Coppola's film "You're a Big Boy Now (1966)", a lonely, unmarried, handicapped woman in "The Fixer (1968)", a nurse who tends to Clint Eastwood in "The Beguiled (1971), "Intermission (1973)" and Pauline Pusser, the wife of sheriff Buford Pusser in "Walking Tall (1973)". Hartman also appeared in a television pilot of "Willow B: Women in Prison (1980)" (aka "Cages" ) and made numerous television appearances. She appeared in more plays, such as "Our Town" in 1969, also appearing in "The Glass Menagerie", "The Madwoman of Chaillot", "Bus Stop" and "Beckett". She also completed a road tour of the play, "Morning's at Seven".
Hartman's life was plagued by acute depression and insecurity; Hartman spent a year at the Institute of Living in Hartford in 1978. After her role as Mrs. Brisby in "The Secret of NIMH (1982)", Hartman retired from acting, and divorced her husband in 1984. Hartman was also frequently a patient at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, where her sister Janet took care of her.
On June 10, 1987, Hartman called her doctor and told him that she had been feeling despondent. Just before noon that same day, Hartman committed suicide by throwing herself out of her fifth-floor studio flat window at the King Edward Apartments in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland. She was 43 years old.- Lance Reventlow was born on 24 February 1936 in London, England, UK. He was married to Cheryl Holdridge and Jill St. John. He died on 24 July 1972 in Aspen, Colorado, USA.
- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents: housewife Maria Gurdin (née Zoodiloff), known by multiple aliases including Mary, Marie and Musia, and second husband Nick Gurdin (née Zacharenko), a janitor and prop builder. Nicholas was born in Primorsky Krai, son of a chocolate-factory worker. Maria was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia to a wealthy industrialist. Natalie's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories.
Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War. Her paternal grandfather joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces early in the war and was killed in a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers. This convinced the Zacharenkos to migrate to Shanghai, China, where they had relatives. Wood's paternal grandmother remarried in 1927 and moved the family to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1933 they resettled along the U.S. West Coast. Nicholas met Wood's mother, four years his senior, while she was still married to Alexander Tatuloff, an Armenian mechanic she divorced in 1936.
Mary Tatuloff, Wood's mother, had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming a ballet dancer. She grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin and had married Alexander there in 1925. The Tatuloffs had one daughter, Ovsanna, before coming to America in 1930. After marrying Nicholas Zacharenko in 1938, five months before Wood's birth, Mary (now calling herself Marie) transferred her dream of stardom onto her second child. Marie frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where she could study the films of Hollywood child stars.
Wood's parents changed the family name to Gurdin upon obtaining U.S. citizenship, and her pseudonymous mother finally settled on a permanent first name: Maria. In 1942 they bought a house in Santa Rosa, where young Natalie was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. She got to audition for roles as an actress, and the family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name Wood for her, in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalie's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood.
Wood made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). She was only five years old, and her scene as the "Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone" lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family. She had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was unable to "cry on cue" for a key scene, so her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene.
Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which was a commercial and critical hit. Wood got her first taste of fame, and afterwards Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Following her early success, Wood receive many more film offers. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter of such stars as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood found herself in high demand and appeared in over twenty films as a child actress.
The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom. Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. She was reportedly a "straight A student." Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was quite impressed by Wood's intellect. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
While Wood acquired the services of agents, her early career was micromanaged by her mother. An older Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She played the role of a teenage girl who wears makeup and dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child actress to an ingenue. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Her next significant film was The Searchers (1956), a western in which she played the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of John Wayne's character. The film was a commercial and critical hit, and has since become regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, WB had her paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period was the title character in Marjorie Morningstar (1958), as a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the '50s.
Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and MGM recorded a loss of $1,108,000. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt. With her career in decline following this failure, Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in his upcoming film Splendor in the Grass (1961). Kazan cast Wood as the female lead, because he found in her (in his words): a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure." Kazan is credited for producing Wood's most powerful moment as an actress. The film was a critical success, with Wood nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Wood's next important film was West Side Story (1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about $44 million gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed, and is still regarded as one of the best films of Wood's career. Her next film was Gypsy (1962), playing the role of burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Film historians credit the film as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterization. The film was the eighth highest-grossing release of 1962, and was well-received critically.
Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano, played by Steve McQueen, finds herself pregnant and desperately seeks an abortion. The film under-performed at the box office but was critically well-received. Wood received her third (and last) nomination for an Academy Award. At age 25, Wood was tied with Teresa Wright as the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations. Wood held that designation until 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence achieved her third nomination at age 23.
Wood continued her successful film career until 1966, but her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Wood made her comeback in the comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars in profits. She chose not to capitalize on the film's success, however, and did not take another acting job for five years.
In 1970, Wood was married to the screenwriter Richard Gregson and was expecting her first child, Natasha Gregson Wagner. She went into semi-retirement to be a stay-at-home mom, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery comedy Peeper (1975), the science fiction film Meteor (1979), the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and the posthumously-released science fiction film Brainstorm (1983).
In the late '70s, Wood found success in television roles, appearing in several made-for-TV movies and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979). Her project received high ratings, and she had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.
On November 28, 1981, Wood joined her last husband Robert Wagner, their married friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. Conspicuously absent from the group was Christopher's wife, casting director Georgianne Walken. The four of them were on board the Wagners' yacht "Splendour." Earwitness Marilyn Wayne heard cries for help around 11:05 P.M. and a "man's voice slurred, and in aggravated tone, say something to the effect of, 'Oh, hold on, we're coming to get you,' and not long after, the cries for help subsided." On the morning of November 29, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat, near small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The toxicology report revealed her blood alcohol level was at .14, over the legal limit of .10. Wood was buried on December 2 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Nine days later, the LACSD officially closed the case.- Best remembered in Britain for the television series Arthur of the Britons (1972), Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and as the villain in For Your Eyes Only (1981). His break into films came with Don Levy's Herostratus (1967). His career was intermittently successful, interspersing notable performances with spells of unemployment. Michael was unmarried, living in Hampstead, London, and under treatment for depression at the time of his suicide in 1992.
- Music Artist
- Actress
- Producer
Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born into a musical family on 9 August 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of gospel star Cissy Houston (née Emily Lee Drinkard) and John Russell Houston, Jr., and cousin of singing star Dionne Warwick.
She began singing in the choir at her church, The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, as a young child and by the age of 15 was singing backing vocals professionally with her mother on Chaka Khan's 1978 hit, 'I'm Every Woman'. She went on to provide backing vocals for Lou Rawls, Jermaine Jackson and her own mother and worked briefly as a model, appearing on the cover of 'Seventeen' magazine in 1981.
She began working as a featured vocalist for the New York-based funk band Material and it was the quality of her vocal work with them that attracted the attention of the major record labels, including Arista with whom she signed in 1983 and where she stayed for the rest of her career.
Her debut album, 'Whitney Houston', was released in 1985 and became the biggest-selling album by a debut artist. Several hit singles, including 'Saving All My Love For You', 'How Will I Know', 'You Give Good Love', and 'The Greatest Love of All', were released from the album, setting her up for a Beatles-beating seven consecutive US number ones. The album itself sold 3 million copies in its first year in the US and went on to sell 25 million worldwide, winning her the first of her six Grammies.
The 1987 follow-up album, 'Whitney', which included the hits 'Where Do Broken Hearts Go' and 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody', built on her success but it was the 1992 film The Bodyguard (1992) that sealed her place as one of the best-selling artists of all time. While the movie itself and her performance in it were not highly praised, the soundtrack album and her cover of the Dolly Parton song 'I Will Always Love You' topped the singles and albums charts for months and sold 44 million copies around the world.
That same year she married ex-New Edition singer Bobby Brown with whom she had her only child, their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown in March 1993. It was about this time that her much documented drug use began and by 1996 she was a daily user.
Her 1998 album, 'My Love Is Your Love' was well reviewed but the drug abuse began to affect her reputation and press reports at the time said that she was becoming difficult to work with, if she turned up at all. She was dropped from a performance at The 72nd Annual Academy Awards (2000) because she was "out of it" at rehearsals. Her weight fluctuated wildly - she was so thin at a 'Michael Jackson' tribute in 2001 that rumors circulated the next day that she had died - and her voice began to fail her. She was twice admitted to rehab and declared herself drug-free in 2010 but returned to rehab in May 2011.
Her 2009 comeback album 'I Look To You' was positively received and sold well, but promotional performances were still marred by her weakened voice. Her final acting performance was in Sparkle (2012) (a remake of the 1976 movie, Sparkle (1976)), released after her death.
She was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel room on 11 February 2012.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kentucky-born Marie McDonald, born Cora Marie Frye in 1923, was a leggy, voluptuous blonde starlet who pursued her career with a vengeance but found little reward in the end. Her mother was a former Ziegfeld girl and her grandmother an operatic singer. Her father, on the other hand, was not so artistically inclined, earning a living as a warden at Leavenworth Prison. Her parents divorced when Marie was just 6 years old. Marie's mother remarried and the new family moved to Yonkers, New York, where she attended Roosevelt High School and excelled in piano and wrote for the school newspaper.
Although Marie was offered a college scholarship by Columbia University in journalism, Marie's impressive beauty and physical assets propelled her to try a show business career. A Powers model at 15 (she lied about her age), she quit high school and started entering beauty contests, winning the "Miss Yonkers" and "The Queen of Coney Island" titles, among others. In 1939 she was crowned "Miss New York," but subsequently lost at the "Miss America" pageant.
The attention she received from her beauty titles, however, pointed her straight to the Broadway stage and the "George White's Scandals of 1939." This in turn led to her move to Los Angeles, finding work in the chorus line while trying to break into pictures. She found her first singing work with Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra on his radio show and eventually joined other bands as well. Although Universal signed her up, she couldn't get past a few one-line jobs. She knew publicity would have to be her mode of operation if she was to draw the necessary attention and advance her career.
Press agents dubbed Marie "The Body" and the tag eventually stuck. Though her physical attributes were impressive, her talent was less so. Managing to come her way were the films Guest in the House (1944), Living in a Big Way (1947) with Gene Kelly and Tell It to the Judge (1949). Marie was once in contention for the Billie Dawn role in "Born Yesterday," which could have been her big break, but she lost out to Judy Holliday. The audience simply didn't latch on to Marie and she ended up more on the road doing bus-and-truck shows than anything else.
Despite a plethora of tabloid attention, which included her seven marriages and numerous sex scandals in addition to the publicity hijinks she managed to muster up, notoriety that would have made the late Jayne Mansfield envious, Marie's career eventually stalled and she turned to drink, drugs and despair. This led to frequent skirmishes with the law and more than a few nervous breakdowns. Her last effective role was in the Jerry Lewis starrer The Geisha Boy (1958) where she gamely played a snippy movie star at the mercy of the comedian's outrageous slapstick. In 1965, at age 42, the never-say-die gal finally decided enough was enough and she ended it all with an overdose of pills.- The Honorable Elsie Mackay was born August 21, 1893 in Simla-Calcutta, West Bengal, India, to James Lyle Mackay, 1st Earl of Inchcape of Strathnaver, a British colonial administrator in India who became chairman of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and Jean Paterson Shanks. Her brother, Kenneth Mackay was the 2nd Lord Inchcape. Her sister Effie Mackay, married Sir Eugen Millington-Drake, who was the British Minister to Uraguay during the 1939 Battle of the River Plate (view the 1956 film). Elsie was reportedly disinherited by her family after eloping with actor Dennis Wyndham to be married on 23 May 1917. She appeared as silent film actress Poppy Wyndham from 1919 through 1920. In a historical photo from Grand Central Palace Bldg in New York, it states that as Poppy Wyndham she was the first woman jockey in England, and in her short career on the turf she piloted no less than a dozen winners under the barriers. In the few events from which her sex did not bar her, her colors - yellow and blue - were always present, and always were heavily backed. After the marriage to Wyndham was annulled in 1922 she returned to her family and developed a career as an interior decorator, creating lavish interiors, state rooms and public spaces for her father's shipping line, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). In 1923 she launched the RMS Maloja, and went on to design much of the interiors for the four P&O "R" class ships of 1925: SS Rawalpindi, SS Ranchi, SS Ranpura and SS Rajputana, plus the RMS Viceroy of India in 1927. In early March 1928 the Daily Express discovered that Captain Hinchliffe and Mackay were preparing for a transatlantic attempt by carrying out test flights at RAF Cranwell and were staying at the George Hotel in Leadenham near Grantham. The story was silenced by Mackay's threatened legal action as she intended to depart in secret while her father was in Egypt, having promised her family she would not make the attempt. At 8:35 am on 13 March 1928 Endeavour took off from RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, with minimal fuss as Hinchliffe had told only two friends he was going and Elsie registered under the pseudonym of 'Gordon Sinclair'. Approximately five hours later, at 1.30 pm the chief lighthouse keeper at Mizen Head on the south west coast of Cork, Ireland saw the monoplane over the village of Crookhaven. A French steamer later reported seeing them still on course, but nothing else is known. A crowd of 5,000 is reputed to have waited for them at Mitchel Field, Long Island. In December 1928, eight months later, a single piece of identifiable undercarriage (a wheel with a serial number on it) washed ashore in north west Ireland. Her body was never recovered and there is a memorial stained glass window, as well as an inscription underneath the bell at Glenapp Church on the family estate marking her death as 13th March 1928.
- Virginia Chapman was born on 14 June 1921 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Highway Patrol (1955), Official Detective (1957) and Perry Mason (1957). She was married to James Arness and Leo Myron Morton. She died on 29 July 1977 in Malibu, California, USA.
- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actress
Janis Lyn Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the oil-refining town of Port Arthur, Texas, near the border with Louisiana. Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a business college. As an overweight teenager, she was a folk-music devotee (especially Odetta, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith). After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where she played auto-harp in Austin bars.She was nominated for the Ugliest Man on Campus in 1963, and she spent two years traveling, performing and becoming drug-addicted. Back home in 1966, her friend Chet Helms suggested she become lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, an established Haight-Ashbury band consisting of guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew, bassist Peter Albin and drummer Dave Getz). She got wide recognition through the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, highlights of which were released in Monterey Pop (1968), and with the band's landmark second album, "Cheap Thrills". She formed her "Kosmic Blues Band" the following year and achieved still further recognition as a solo performer at Woodstock in 1969, highlights released in Woodstock (1970). In the spring of 1970, she sang with the "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and, on October 4 of that year, she was found dead in Hollywood's Landmark Motor Hotel (now known as Highland Gardens Hotel) from a heroin-alcohol overdose the previous day. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of California. Her biggest selling album was the posthumously released "Pearl", which contained her quintessential song: "Me & Bobby McGee".- Writer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Neil Burstyn was born on 17 July 1939 in New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Monkees (1965), Panic in Year Zero! (1962) and The Young Savages (1961). He was married to Ellen Burstyn. He died on 1 November 1978 in New York, New York, USA.- John Pickard was born on 25 June 1913 in Lascassas, Tennessee, USA. He was an actor, known for True Grit (1969), The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Time Tunnel (1966). He was married to Anne Bernard McLaurine. He died on 4 August 1993 in Rutherford County, Tennessee, USA.
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- Composer
Along with fellow Sex Pistol member, Johnny Rotten, lanky, sneering, pock faced Sid epitomised the punk movement born in the mid 1970s in working class England. Sid Vicious (real name John Beverly) wasn't an original member of the Pistols, but rather joined the band after original bassist, Glen Matlock dropped out after personality clashes with lead singer Rotten. On stage, Sid (often stripped to the waist) would incite the audience to get wilder and more frenzied, and his infamous antics included spitting and spraying beer into the audience. The British establishment despised the Pistols with a passion, and Sid was viewed as a crude, foul mouthed hoodlum corrupting English youth with his unclean image. Unfortunately for a naive Sid, he fell into the company of alleged drug user, Nancy Spungen, and his world spiralled out of control leading to the break up of the Pistols (their last show being in San Francisco), and Sid's lame attempts to kick start his own solo career, which included a demented cover of the popular Frank Sinatra song "My Way", accompanied by a violent video clip. Vicious and Spungen took up residency in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City in early 1978, however their self destructive personalities meant a tragedy was fast approaching, and on October 12th 1978, Spungen was found dead in their hotel room from stab wounds. Vicious was charged by police with Spungen's murder and released on bail, pending trial. However, only four months later in February 1979, Vicious himself was found dead of a heroin overdose. Sid was dead at aged 21. His will requested his ashes be poured over Nancy's grave at the King David Cemetery in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Along with Janis Joplin, Brian Jones & Jimi Hendrix, Sid had assured himself a place in rock and roll history, as another iconic music figure dead at a young age.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dana Michelle Plato was born in Maywood, California, on Saturday, November 7, 1964. Her first excursion into the film world occurred when she was 11 in the television film Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (1975). Dana never made an impact on the TV screen until she landed the role of Kimberly Drummond in the TV hit sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978) from 1978-1986. After the series ended, Dana had difficulty finding more acting work. Sometimes she would act in a made-for-TV movie or a low- budget silver-screen film. She was married for Lanny Lambert for seven years and they had a son. She was arrested in 1991 for robbing a Las Vegas video store and placed on probation; the next year she was arrested again, this time for forging a Valium prescription. She had just finished an interview with Howard Stern in the spring of 1999 when she and her fiancé, Robert Menchaca, were headed back to California. She hoped the interview would revive her stalled career. They stopped at his parents' house in Moore, Oklahoma for a Mother's-Day-weekend visit; on Saturday, May 8, 1999, Dana died of what appeared to be an accidental overdose of the painkiller "Loritab". On May 21, a coroner's inquest ruled her death a suicide because of the large amount of drugs in her body and her history of past suicide attempts. Dana Plato was 34 years old.- Tyler Lambert was born on 2 July 1984 in California, USA. He died on 6 May 2010 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
David Carradine was born in Hollywood, California, the eldest son of legendary character actor John Carradine, and his wife, Ardanelle Abigail (McCool). He was a member of an acting family that included brothers Keith Carradine and Robert Carradine as well as his daughters Calista Carradine and Kansas Carradine, and nieces Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton.
He was born in Hollywood and educated at San Francisco State College, where he studied music theory and composition. It was while writing music for the Drama Department's annual revues that he discovered his own passion for the stage, joining a Shakespearean repertory company and learning his craft on his feet. After a two-year stint in the army, he found work in New York as a commercial artist and later found fame on Broadway in "The Deputy" and "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" opposite Christopher Plummer. With that experience he returned to Hollywood, landing the lead in the short-lived TV series Shane (1966) before being tapped to star opposite Barbara Hershey in Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood film, Boxcar Bertha (1972). The iconic Kung Fu (1972) followed, catapulting Carradine to super-stardom for the next three years, until he left the series to pursue his film career.
That career included more than 100 feature films, a couple of dozen television movies, a whole range of theater on and off Broadway and another hit series, Kung Fu: A Legend Reborn (1992).
Carradine received the Best Actor Award from the National Board of Film Review as well as a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory (1976), and he won critical acclaim for his work as Cole Younger in The Long Riders (1980). "Kung Fu" also received seven Emmy nominations in its first season, including one for Carradine as Best Actor. In addition, he won the People's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival's "Director's Fortnight" for his work on Americana (1981), and a second Golden Globe nomination for his supporting role in North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985). Among his other notable film credits were Gray Lady Down (1978), Mean Streets (1973), Bird on a Wire (1990), The Long Goodbye (1973), The Serpent's Egg (1977) and Circle of Iron (1978). He returned to the screen in what could be his greatest performance, playing the title role in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), for which he received his fourth Golden Globe nomination. He also continued his devotion to music, and recorded some 60 tracks in various musical genres and sang in several movies. He made his home in Los Angeles with his fifth wife Annie, her four children and their two dogs.
Found dead in Bangkok, Thailand, on June 3, 2009, aged 72.- Actor
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Born in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, to Greg and Mary, Jonathan Brandis began his career at age 5, acting in several television commercials. He also appeared in small parts in several films and TV shows before his first starring role in the 1990 film The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990). He starred in popular films such as Ladybugs (1992) and starred as Lucas Wolenczak in Steven Spielberg's television series SeaQuest 2032 (1993). He doubled up his high school courses so he could finish a year early for his role on SeaQuest. After his career stalled for a bit, he was hoping his role in serious drama film Hart's War (2002) would relaunch it. However, most of his scenes ended up being cut from the finished film. This caused him to fall into a deep depression in which he would drink heavily and tragically end his own life on November 12th, 2003.- Benjamin Keough was born on 21 October 1992 in Tampa, Florida, USA. He was an actor, known for Rod & Barry (2017) and Elvis by the Presleys (2005). He died on 12 July 2020 in Calabasas, California, USA.
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Bill Graham was born on 8 January 1931 in Berlin, Germany. He was a producer and actor, known for Bugsy (1991), The Doors (1991) and Apocalypse Now (1979). He was married to Bonnie B MacLean. He died on 25 October 1991 in Vallejo, California, USA.- Producer
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Film producer Michael Todd was one of the major contributors to technical innovation in the film industry in the 1950s. Having worked with Fred Waller and Cinerama, he got tired of the three-panel format, left the company and tried to find the process for making "Cinerama coming from one hole". He joined forces with the American Optical Co. and developed a system using 65mm cine cameras at 30 fps and wide angle-photography (approx 150 degrees). The system was named Todd-AO after its inventors and was by far the best big-screen system ever seen, when it was introduced with Oklahoma! (1955). The Todd-AO prints used 70mm film with a 2.2:1 ratio. Sound was six-track magnetic only, with five channels behind the screen and one surround channel, with Perspecta coding (a switch stereo device) The 70mm Todd-AO productions were premiered through Magna Theatre Corp., which also co-produced the pictures. Due to the non-standard speed, the first two Todd-AO pictures (the other was Around the World in 80 Days (1956)) were parallel-shot in 35mm CinemaScope with 24 fps for general release, but for the third production, South Pacific (1958), the Todd-AO pictures were all shot in 24 fps. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958, but his system lived on, adopted as the wide super format of 20th Century-Fox, which used it all through the 1960s. During that period a number of alternate processes developed, of which Super Panavision became the most used.- Actor
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Born of a Spanish father and French mother in Whitechapel. Although most often called upon to play the villain (due to his dark good looks and sinister beard), he also had a career as a voice actor on BBC Radio appearing on such programs as the "Morning Story". He was a notable 'The Master' in many series of Doctor Who (1963).- Actress
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Dorothy Kilgallen was the daughter of James Kilgallen, a colorful and popular newspaperman with the Hearst Corporation. She followed her father into the newspaper business and made her early reputation as a crime reporter (a novelty for women in those days) and for her participation in an around-the-world race using transportation that was available at the time (1936) to ordinary people, not aviators. Kilgallen finished second out of the three newspaper reporters who participated in the race. Her fame (she was the only woman) and her subsequent book about the race, "Girl Around the World," established her as a presence in the journalism profession. The book became the basis of the movie Fly Away Baby (1937).
In 1938, Kilgallen become a powerful and influential Broadway columnist. Starting in 1945, Kilgallen and husband Richard Kollmar hosted a long-running early morning radio talk show called "Breakfast With Dorothy and Dick." Although the couple had two children who sometimes joined them talking on the radio, Dorothy and Dick "lived an early version of an open marriage," according to a biographer. Their arrangement allowed both to carry on affairs as long as they did so outside of the expensive five-story neo-Georgian brownstone on Manhattan's East 68th Street that they both loved to decorate and furnish.
Millions of Americans came to know and admire Kilgallen through the TV quiz show What's My Line? (1950). She took the game more seriously than her more lighthearted colleagues did. It allegedly bothered her that she was never as popular with the show's viewers as were her fellow panelists, especially Arlene Francis. NBC News B-roll footage of Kilgallen's February 1964 visit to Dallas, Texas shows, however, that she was delighted when autograph seekers gathered around her. Game show viewers (Kilgallen was seen playing other games besides What's My Line?) seemed to have strong feelings about her. Either they loved her and rooted for her or hated her and enjoyed watching another participant outsmart her.
Kilgallen's relationship with singer Johnnie Ray started out as fun and secretive but later became disastrous when she competed with Ray's male lovers for his attention. Eventually, Kilgallen and Ray drank heavily together in public, a problem that may or may not have affected her performance on What's My Line? and her functioning with a typewriter. Kilgallen's newspaper work consisted of much more than her "gossipy" syndicated Broadway column. Her knowledge of the judge's misconduct during the 1954 murder trial of Samuel Sheppard (his case was the basis for the TV series The Fugitive (1963)) helped F. Lee Bailey secure a new trial for Sheppard. Upon Sheppard's release from the penitentiary that was then located in Columbus, Ohio in July 1964, Bailey helped arrange for a "late-night champagne party" in Cleveland, according to a book the lawyer published in 1971. Kilgallen, who was among the guests, had her first conversation with the wrongly convicted Sheppard.
Several months earlier, Kilgallen had visited Dallas, Texas to cover the murder trial of Jack Ruby. She secured two exclusive interviews with the defendant, who was being tried for the murder of alleged John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. One of Ruby's lawyers, Joe Tonahill, said years later that in the courtroom Kilgallen and Ruby made eye contact with each other in a way that suggested they may have met before his arrest. Tonahill and other lawyers including Melvin Belli were busy trying to save Ruby from the electric chair and had no time to investigate that. Kilgallen's first conversation with Ruby after his arrest occurred while he sat at the defense table during a recess. It resulted in the headline "Nervous Ruby Feels Breaking Point Near" in the New York Journal-American. (The newspaper was owned by the Hearst Corporation.) She never published anything from or even acknowledged (to her readers) her second conversation with Ruby. It occurred inside a small office behind the judge's bench out of earshot of the deputy sheriffs who were guarding Ruby and out of earshot of his lawyers and everyone else in the courthouse. It lasted approximately eight minutes, according to Joe Tonahill.
Possibly as a result of what Kilgallen learned from Ruby, she became a vocal critic of the Warren Commission investigation of the president's assassination. She allegedly told friends and her lawyer, but not her newspaper readers, that she soon was going to reveal important new information on the murder of JFK. Although Kilgallen's reactions to the Warren Commission report remain accessible, her theory about who shot the president will never be known. She died under mysterious circumstances (suicide or an accidental overdose according to some, murder according to others) soon after the advance notice she allegedly had given her friends and lawyer.
The notebooks containing the information Kilgallen was about to publish disappeared. They were never seen again. Some felt that assassination researchers should have questioned Ron Pataky, an obscure newspaper critic based in Columbus, Ohio whom she befriended a few months after her encounters with Jack Ruby. The Columbus newspaper sometimes mentioned Pataky's travels to New York City, and in June 1964 Kilgallen's column had them riding together in a London taxicab. A month after her death, widower Richard Kollmar refused to cooperate with conspiracy theorist Mark Lane when Lane tried to find her notes. Ten years later other loved ones, including her journalist father who was by then in his late eighties and still working for the Hearst Corporation, refused to discuss her career or the assassination with a biographer.
As the 50th anniversary of her death approaches, only recently did a researcher discover at Syracuse University a long audio recording of Richard Kollmar's 1967 appearance on a locally broadcast New York City radio show that was hosted by John Nebel, better known as "Long John Nebel." Kollmar was promoting the book Murder One that was credited to his late wife. It sold well enough in 1967 to warrant more than one printing and was reissued in paperback. Nebel, who had been a fan of the breakfast radio show that "Dorothy and Dick" had done, and who had known Kilgallen, encouraged Kollmar to discuss publicly many aspects of his late wife's life and career, including the Sheppard murder case.
Throughout the long radio broadcast, you notice that Johnnie Ray, Ron Pataky and events surrounding the assassination are off limits. Kollmar never gets near any of those topics. Neither does Nebel or the other two people who are heard talking with them on the 1967 aircheck. (The book Murder One omitted a chapter on the Jack Ruby murder trial that Ruby's lawyer Joe Tonahill said years later that Kilgallen had planned to include.) Long John Nebel and his guests do discuss Kilgallen's feud with Frank Sinatra, but they avoid the detail that Sinatra had drawn the public's attention to Kilgallen's chin that had prevented her from being photogenic.
Kilgallen's only relative who ever talked publicly about any mysteries surrounding her was her youngest child who had been eleven-and-a-half years old when she died. At age 21, he told the biographer that his family was keeping him, too, in the dark about what had happened ten years earlier.- Actor
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James Byron Dean was born February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana, to Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton A. Dean, a farmer turned dental technician. His mother died when Dean was nine, and he was subsequently raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. After grade school, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of acting. He received rave reviews for his work as the blackmailing Arab boy in the New York production of Gide's "The Immoralist", good enough to earn him a trip to Hollywood. His early film efforts were strictly small roles: a sailor in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis overly frantic musical comedy Sailor Beware (1952); a GI in Samuel Fuller's moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (1951) and a youth in the Piper Laurie-Rock Hudson comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal (1952).
He had major roles in only three movies. In the Elia Kazan production of John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955) he played Cal Trask, the bad brother who could not force affection from his stiff-necked father. His true starring role, the one which fixed his image forever in American culture, was that of the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955). George Stevens' filming of Edna Ferber's Giant (1956), in which he played the non-conforming cowhand Jett Rink who strikes it rich when he discovers oil, was just coming to a close when Dean, driving his Porsche Spyder race car, collided with another car while on the road near Cholame, California on September 30, 1955. He had received a speeding ticket just two hours before. At age 24, James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.- Actress
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Anna Maria Pierangeli was born June 19, 1932, in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. Anna and her twin sister, Marisa Pavan, both had their eyes on becoming film stars, since that was one of the big Italian pastimes. Anna adopted her surname and split it in half, and it was as Pier Angeli that she would find fame. Her first role was an uncredited part in 1948's The Million Dollar Nickel (1952), an Italian production. Pier was 16 at the time and it was to be the first of many roles for this beautiful woman. The film was largely forgettable but it was a start. The following year she played in another Italian production, Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). Again it was a very small role, and she was not seen on the screen again until 1951. Between 1949 and 1951 she appeared in stage productions and found work in menial jobs. When she did return it was in the film The Light Touch (1951) as Anna Vasarri. Later that year she won the title role in Teresa (1951). However, she again hit a drought with only one film in 1952 and two in 1953. The next year things began to pick up, however, with Hollywood beckoning. After the Italian Miss Nitouche (1954) she caught the eyes of Hollywood moguls, who cast her in Flame and the Flesh (1954) and The Silver Chalice (1954). Now she divided her time between Italy and the US making movies. She married Vic Damone in 1954, a union that lasted only four years and produced one son.
No film offers came in 1955, but in 1956 Pier landed the role of Norma Graziano (wife of fighter Rocky Graziano) in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) opposite Paul Newman. The film was well received at the box office and she had hopes that things were going to pick up again. She played Ynez in Port Afrique (1956) later that year and then another drought ensued. After The Vintage (1957), Merry Andrew (1958) and SOS Pacific (1959), she made three more films in 1960. Then once again 1961 saw no appearances. In 1962 Pier played Ildith in Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) and later that year played in a French production entitled White Slave Ship (1961). After the Italian production of Shadow of Evil (1964) she returned in the hit European-American co-production Battle of the Bulge (1965).
After a handful of films between 1966 and 1970, Pier realized her dreams of super-stardom were not to be. She had divorced her second husband (Armando Trovajoli) in 1969 and made her final appearance on the screen in 1971 in the low-budget sci-fi opus Octaman (1971). On September 10th of that year Pier was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her Beverly Hills home. She was only 39 years old.- Actor
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Albert Salmi was born on March 11, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, to Finnish parents. After serving in the Army during WWII, he used the GI Bill to study at the Dramatic Workshop of the American Theater Wing and the prestigious Actors Studio. He became a stage actor, very soon landing on Broadway, where his role as Bo Decker in "Bus Stop" was his biggest stage success. A compromise between the stage and screen was live TV drama, in which he was cast regularly. His portrayal of Bruce Pearson in the The United States Steel Hour (1953)'s live 1956 broadcast of "Bang the Drum Slowly" was heart-tuggingly poignant. Salmi's very first film appearance was a choice role in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), for which he turned down an Oscar nomination. The National Board of Review succeeded in presenting him with its award for the same picture, however. Salmi came to enjoy film work and actively sought out parts in westerns. He became a very familiar presence, especially on the TV screen, where he guest starred in many of the westerns and other series of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1967 he was presented with the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his role in the Gunsmoke (1955) episode entitled "Death Watch". This bronze cowboy on horseback became his most cherished award. Salmi demonstrated his versatility, however, as years went on. Tall, brawny and sometimes quite intimidating, he was often cast as the bad guy or the authority figure. He was equally convincing, though, as a wronged or misunderstood good guy or a good-natured sidekick. A method actor, Salmi had the ability to make you love or hate his character.
He was, in real life, quite different from most of the characters he played. A quiet-natured family man, he was an oddity by glitzy Hollywood standards. Many of his friends and co-stars have commented on his sense of humor and his lack of pretense. In semi-retirement, he shared his knowledge of theatre by teaching drama classes in Spokane, Washington, where he and his wife settled.- Actress
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On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace struck out on her own, heading to New York's bright lights to try her luck there. Grace worked some as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. She also made a brief foray into the infant medium of television. Not content with the work in New York, Grace moved to Southern California for the more prestigious part of acting -- motion pictures. In 1951, she appeared in her first film entitled Fourteen Hours (1951) when she was 22. It was a small part, but a start nonetheless. The following year she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon (1952), a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be very popular. In 1953, Grace appeared in only one film, but it was another popular one. The film was Mogambo (1953) where Grace played Linda Nordley. The film was a jungle drama in which fellow cast members, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner turned in masterful performances. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. Although she got noticed with High Noon, her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder (1954) made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. Grace would forever be immortalized by winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in The Country Girl (1954). In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The film was well received. It also turned out to be her final acting performance. Grace had recently met and married Prince Rainier of the little principality of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. On September 14, 1982, Grace was killed in an automobile accident in her adoptive home country. She was just 52 years old.- Barbara Read was born on 29 December 1917 in Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada. She was an actress, known for Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), Three Smart Girls (1936) and The Spellbinder (1939). She was married to William Talman, Willard Edward Josephy, John Pershing Crawford and William Paul III. She died on 11 December 1963 in Laguna Beach, California, USA.
- Scott's last feature film was the movie Holes (2003) starring Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight, in which he had the supporting role of 'Trout Walker'; the film was released in April 2003. In addition he appeared in The Flying Dutchman (2001) (2001), co-starring Rod Steiger; Saints and Sinners (1994), The in Crowd (1988), Panama Sugar (1990), co-starring Oliver Reed, and Without Evidence (1995), co-starring Angelina Jolie. His television credits included appearances in The Division (2001), Sons and Daughters (1991), Air America (1998) and Melrose Place (1992).
Scott had an extensive theatre background that spanned from Broadway to regional theatre in Los Angeles. He was in the original cast of "Dream Girls" on Broadway and toured for many years with "A Chorus Line", in which he played various roles. Regional theatre roles included "Hurly Burly", co-starring along side Sean Penn, and the one act play "Kindness of Women", written and directed by Sean Penn. - Sean Lynch was born in 1934 in Marylebone, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1958), Violent Playground (1958) and Midshipman Barney (1951). He was married to Annie Ross. He died in 1979 in Spain.
- Sean Lynch was born in 1934 in Marylebone, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1958), Violent Playground (1958) and Midshipman Barney (1951). He was married to Annie Ross. He died in 1979 in Spain.
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Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989.
He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992). While he had supporting roles in some other major productions like Scent of a Woman (1992) and Twister (1996), his breakthrough role came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997).
He quickly became an icon of indie cinema, establishing a reputation as one of the screen's finest actors, in a variety of supporting and second leads in indie and major features, including Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), Flawless (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and State and Main (2000). He also appeared in supporting roles in such mainstream, big-budget features as Red Dragon (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Mission: Impossible III (2006).
Hoffman was also quite active on the stage. On Broadway, he has earned two Tony nominations, as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West" and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill (I)'s "Long Day's Journey into Night". His other acting credits in the New York theater include "The Seagull" (directed by Mike Nichols for The New York Shakespeare Festival), "Defying Gravity", "The Merchant of Venice" (directed by Peter Sellars), "Shopping and F*@%ing" and "The Author's Voice" (Drama Desk nomination).
He was the Co-Artistic Director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, for which he directed "Our Lady of 121st Street" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He also directed "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the A Train" by Guirgis for LAByrinth, and "The Glory of Living" by Rebecca Gilman at the Manhattan Class Company.
Hoffman consolidated his reputation as one of the finest actors under the age of 40 with his turn in the title role of Capote (2005), for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award as Best Actor. In 2006, he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the same role.
On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich village, New York. Investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and two open envelopes of heroin next to him. Mr. Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. In 2006, he said in an interview with "60 Minutes" that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was age 22. In 2013, he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin.- Actress
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Karyn is best known for her starring role as Maggie in the hit independent film, Better Than Chocolate (1999). She was also in Superstar (1999), Sailor Moon (1995) , The Life Before This (1999) , and many other film, TV, and theatrical productions. She created, produced, and starred in her one woman feminist show Bad Girls and was honored to be included in The Newfoundland Herald's selection of Newfoundland icons. She finds joy in creating, writing, singing, and answering questions with interpretive dance. Now she is fearlessly venturing into stand up comedy.- Composer
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Audrey Williams was born on 28 February 1923 in Banks, Alabama, USA. She was a composer, known for Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar (1965), Your Cheatin' Heart (1964) and Country Music on Broadway (1965). She was married to Hank Williams and Erskine Guy. She died on 4 November 1975 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.- Actor
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Johnny Horton was born in Los Angeles, but at an early age he moved with his sharecropping parents to Tyler, Texas, where he grew up. Fishing was an early interest in life and he traveled to Alaska to seek employment in this capacity, but after returning to Texas he took up singing. His singing career began in 1950 in Pasadena, California, on radio station KXLA. He later became a regular on "Hometown Jamboree" with Cliffie Stone, on which he was billed as "The Singing Fisherman". In 1951 he made his first recording.
In 1953 he married the widow of Hank Williams, and she took an interest in furthering his career. He became a regular on the radio show "Louisiana Hayride" in 1955 and soon after made an appearance on "Grand Ole Opry". His first hit, "Honky Tonk Man", came in 1956 and was soon followed by "When It's Springtime in Alaska", "The Battle of New Orleans", "Johnny Reb" and "Sink the Bismarck".
In 1960 he recorded "North to Alaska" for the motion picture of the same name (North to Alaska (1960)) starring John Wayne and Stewart Granger. At this point in his career he decided to add acting to his accomplishments and planned on beginning a movie career, but this was not to be. On a foggy night in November of 1960, he was returning from a concert with his manager, Tillman B. Franks, and his bass player, Tommy Tomlinson, when tragedy struck. A car driven by a drunk driver came out of the fog and collided with Johnny's car head on. Horton was killed instantly.- Music Artist
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Hank Williams was born in September 1923 in a small Alabama farming community about 70 miles south of Montgomery. His father was a railroad engineer who was also a victim of shell shock after a year of fighting in France in 1918 during World War I and spent many years in veterans hospitals. Hank's mother, Lillian Skipper Williams, played the organ in their local church and taught him gospel songs when he was six. When Hank turned 10 he taught himself to play the guitar, mostly by watching other guitarists.
In his teens Hank learned to play and sing country songs that he heard on the family radio, and picked up some blues chords from a black friend who was a street musician named Tee-Tot (Rufe Payne). At the age of 14 Hank put together his own band, playing at hoedowns and other get-together, where he won a local talent contest competition with his composition "WPA Blues." At 17, Hank put together a group called 'Hank Williams' Original Drifting Cowboys' and they successfully auditioned for the manager of WSFS Radio in Montgomery, where they played regularly on the air. Hank met his first wife Audrey Williams during a traveling medicine show and they were married in December 1944 at an Alabama gas station. Audrey was a strong-willed woman who became Hank's booking agent, road manager and promoter. It was she who encouraged the stage-frightened Hank to perform on stage and helped book gigs outside of Alabama.
In 1946 Hank and Audrey traveled to Nashville to secure a music publishing contract with producer Fred Rose, head of the Acuff-Rose publishing firm, who asked Hank to write a song on the spot. The song, "Mansion on the Hill", landed Hank a publishing contract with Acuff-Rose. During the late 1940s Hank--a tall, thin man who alway wore a short-brimmed, white cowboy hat--had his peak years when MGM Records signed him for a recording contract and he became a regular on "Louisiana Hayride", a KWKH radio show in Shreveport, Louisiana. In 1949, after the birth of Hank and Audrey's son Hank Williams Jr., Hank was asked to join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where he made his stage debut on June 11, 1949.
From 1949 to 1950, Hank became country music's top artist, with hits like "Lovesick Blues," "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It," "Moanin' the Blues" and "Why Don't You Love Me." His 1951 hits included "Hey, Good Lookin'" "Cold, Cold Heart" and "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)." Hits of 1952 were "Honky Tonk Blues," "Jambalaya," and "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive."
However, Hank's unprecedented success came with a price. A heavy drinker since his late teens, Hank proved to be an undependable performer when be began showing up for concerts drunk, and sometimes didn't show up at all. When Audrey divorced him in 1951 due to their constant fights over his drinking, his band began to become disillusioned with him, too, and the Grand Ole Opry suspended him from appearing at live shows. In October 1952 Hank married his second wife, 19-year-old Billie Jean Jones, who was no more successful than Audrey in protecting Hank from himself. Also, the Drifting Cowboys departed that same month due to Hank's violent mood swings and unpredictability. He was still in demand for live performances, though.
On the early morning hours on New Year's Day 1953, while traveling through West Virginia on the way to a show in Canton, Ohio, Hank Williams died in his sleep in the back seat of his Cadillac limousine at the age of 29.- Nerine Kidd was born on 13 July 1959 in Lake Worth, Florida, USA. She was an actress, known for Umetni raj (1990) and A Twist in the Tale (1999). She was married to William Shatner. She died on 9 August 1999 in Studio City, California, USA.
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Well-remembered at Stanford for his many pranks and practical jokes. Was an occasional guest on Rudy Vallee radio program and Kraft Music Hall in the late 1930s and early 40s. Performed in clubs nationwide. He specialized in manic comic sports narrations, often using his friends' names as characters. Narrated Disney cartoon "Hockey Homicide" and others. Joined Spike Jones' troupe in 1946, recording his horse and auto-race routines ("William Tell Overture" and "Dance of the Hours." Developed a spoonerizing character for the Spike Jones Radio Show ("Professor Feitlebaum"), 1947-1949, borrowing heavily from 1930s comic "Joe Twerp." Toured with Jones' stage revue until 1951. Returned to Jones for various record and television projects thru 1964. Was early TV guest in 1940s. Also made many "Day with Doodles" silent comedy shorts for color TV in the early 1960s. Was very dogmatic that his famous horse character was "Feitlebaum" (not Beetlebaum). Was very approachable in later years, and loved to chat with his fans, even listing his home phone number in the Los Angeles directory.- Irene Fenwick was born Irene Frizzel in Chicago, Illinois on September 5, 1887. She was predominately a stage actress and a fine one at that. Her first film was THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR in 1915. She was to make three more that year, but one in 1916 called A CONEY ISLAND PRINCESS. Her services were, unfortunately, not in high demand. After A GIRL LIKE THAT and THE SIN WOMAN in 1917, Irene retired from the screen. She had made only seven films. She was much more comfortable on the stage in which she returned. That work really meant something to her in a way films couldn't. At one time she was married to the great actor, Lionel Barrymore. Irene died in Beverly Hills, California on Christmas Eve in 1936. She was 49 years old.
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War-era MGM had a lovely, luminous star in the making with Susan Peters. She possessed a creative talent and innate sensitivity that would surely have reigned as a leading Hollywood player for years to come had not a tragic and cruel twist of fate taken everything away from her.
She was born Suzanne Carnahan in Spokane, Washington on July 3, 1921, the eldest of two children. Her father, Robert, a construction engineer, was killed in an automobile accident in 1928, and the remaining family relocated to Los Angeles to live with Susan's grandmother. Attending various schools growing up, she excelled in athletics and studied drama in her senior year at Hollywood High School where she was spotted by a talent scout. Following graduation, she found an agent and enrolled at Max Reinhardt's School of Dramatic Arts. While performing in a showcase, she was spotted by a Warner Bros. casting agent, tested and signed to the studio in 1940.
Making her debut as an extra Susan and God (1940), she saw little progress and eventually became frustrated at the many bit parts thrown her way. Billed by her given name Suzanne Carnahan (known for possessing a zesty stubborn streak, she had refused to use the studio's made-up stage name of Sharon O'Keefe), Susan was barely given a line in many of her early movies. She did test for a lead role in Kings Row (1942) but lost out to Betty Field. Susan's first big break came with the Humphrey Bogart potboiler The Big Shot (1942), where she was fourth-billed and had the second female lead. Dropped by Warners, MGM picked up her contract and adopted a new stage name for her, Susan Peters. In the Marjorie Main vehicle Tish (1942), Susan earned a co-starring part and met actor Richard Quine on the set. Quine played her husband in the film. The couple also appeared together in the film Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942), and married in real life in November of 1943.
Susan won the role of Ronald Colman's sister's teenage stepdaughter (and a potential love interest of the Colman character) in the profoundly moving film Random Harvest (1942) and earned an Academy Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress" for her efforts. Her potential in that film was quickly discovered and she continued to offer fine work in lesser movies such as the WWII spy tale Assignment in Brittany (1943), the slight comedy Young Ideas (1943) and the romantic war drama Song of Russia (1944), in which she touchingly played Nadya, a young Soviet pianist who falls for Robert Taylor. For these performances, Susan was named "Star of Tomorrow" along with Van Johnson and others.
Then tragedy struck a little more than a year after her wedding day. While on a 1945 New Year's Day duck-hunting trip in the San Diego area with her husband and friends, one of the hunting rifles accidentally discharged when Susan went to retrieve it. The bullet lodged in her spine. Permanently paralyzed from the waist down, MGM paid for her bills but was eventually forced to settle her contract. Susan valiantly forged on with frequent work on radio. In 1946 Susan and Richard happily adopted a son, Timothy Richard, but two years later she divorced Quine -- some say she felt she was too much of a burden.
Appearing with Lana Turner as a demure soldier's wife in Keep Your Powder Dry (1945), which was filmed before but released a year after her accident, Susan made a film "comeback" with The Sign of the Ram (1948), the melodramatic tale of an embittered, manipulative, wheelchair-bound woman who tries to destroy the happiness of all around her, but audiences were not all that receptive. She also turned to the stage with tours of "The Glass Menagerie," in which she played the crippled daughter Laura from a wheelchair (with permission from playwright Tennessee Williams), and "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" opposite Tom Poston, wherein she performed the role of poet and chronic invalid Elizabeth Barrett Browning entirely from a couch.
In March of 1951 she portrayed an Ironside-like lawyer in the TV series Miss Susan (1951) but the show ran for less than one season, folding in December of that year. After this, the increasingly frail actress, who was constantly racked with pain, went into virtual seclusion. Suffering from acute depression and plagued by kidney problems and pneumonia, she finally lost her will to live and died at the age of 31 on October 23, 1952, of kidney failure and starvation, prompted by a developing eating disorder (anorexia nervosa). It was a profoundly sad and most unfortunate end to such a beautiful, courageous spirit and promising talent.- Actor
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George Sanders was born of English parents in St. Petersburg, Russia. He worked in a Birmingham textile mill, in the tobacco business and as a writer in advertising. He entered show business in London as a chorus boy, going from there to cabaret, radio and theatrical understudy. His film debut, in 1936, was as Curly Randall in Find the Lady (1936). His U.S. debut, the same year, with Twentieth Century-Fox, was as Lord Everett Stacy in Lloyd's of London (1936). During the late 1930s and early 1940s he made a number of movies as Simon Templar--the Saint--and as Gay Lawrence, the Falcon. He played Nazis (Maj. Quive-Smith in Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941)), royalty (Charles II in Otto Preminger's Forever Amber (1947)), and biblical roles (Saran of Gaza in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949)). He won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as theatre critic Addison De Witt in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950). In 1957 he hosted a TV series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater (1957). He continued to play mostly villains and charming heels until his suicide in 1972.- Canadian-born character actor Jonathan Hale had a long and distinguished film career, appearing in over 260 pictures and television programs.
He was a member of the diplomatic service prior to his film career, and his stately bearing stood him in good stead for the large variety of corporate executives, military officers and high-level politicians he often played.
His best known and most memorable role was that of Dagwood Bumstead's boss, J.C. Dithers, in the "Blondie" film series, a role he assayed from the first entry (Blondie (1938)) until he left the series in 1946 having appeared in 16 of the 28 "Blondie" films.
In 1966, despondent over health and personal problems, he shot himself to death. - Brassy'n'beautiful blonde Roberta Collins was a terrific, dynamic and scene-stealing delight who greatly enlivened a bunch of choice down'n'dirty 1970s drive-in exploitation pictures with her earthy good humor, boundless vitality, superior acting ability, strong, forceful personality and smoldering sex appeal. Born on November 17, 1944, the tall, leggy, shapely and radiant Roberta first began acting in the late 1960s. Collins made a smashing impression as Alcott, a fiery'n'feisty prison inmate in Jack Hill's chicks-in-chains classic The Big Doll House (1971). Roberta was likewise fantastic as Belle, a bawdy, jovial, kittenish prison inmate in Jonathan Demme's marvelous tongue-in-cheek gem Caged Heat (1974) and hilarious as champion race car driver Matilda the Hun in the uproariously tasteless sci-fi black comedy hoot Death Race 2000 (1975). Other noteworthy parts include one of Claudia Jennings' bitter rivals in The Unholy Rollers (1972), Jean Harlow in the odd Train Ride to Hollywood (1975), Jim Brown's secretary in the outrageous blaxploitation riot Three the Hard Way (1974), a forlorn wayward prostitute in Tobe Hooper's excellent Eaten Alive (1976), a klutzy student driver in the hugely enjoyable car chase romp Speedtrap (1977), and a neurotic egocentric actress in Matt Cimber's outstanding The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976). Alas, Roberta Collins' career ran out of gas and came to an unfortunate close in the 1980s, as such latter lesser credits as Hardbodies (1984), School Spirit (1985), and Hardbodies 2 (1986) all sadly confirm. However, Collins did contribute a typically fine and impressive turn as a tough prison security chief in the gritty babes-behind-bars revenge item Vendetta (1986). She also did guest spots on the TV shows The Rockford Files (1974), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974), Cade's County (1971), and Adam-12 (1968). Roberta Collins died at age 63 from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol on August 16, 2008.
- The only child of Jozsef Barsi and Maria Benko, Judith Eva Barsi beat 10,000-to-1 odds when she was discovered at a San Fernando Valley skating rink at age 5 1/2 in 1983 and mistaken for a three-year-old. Her first commercial was for Donald Duck Orange Juice and she went on to appear in anywhere between fifty and a hundred commercials, several episodes of various T.V. series, and three major motion pictures. Her mother Maria was the main thrust of her career as a Hollywood starlet, but also took great pains to try to give her a normal, happy childhood; bringing her Hungarian meals like duck for her school lunch. But this happy childhood did not last long. Beginning in 1985, Jozsef would often be home drunk instead of working as a plumber, and he refused to let Maria work. As a result, the family briefly went on welfare until Judith's career took off in 1986 and 1987. By the time she entered fourth grade, she was pulling in an estimated $100,000 a year, which bought her family a nice four-bedroom house on a quiet street in West Hill. As her career soared, her father became an increasingly abusive recluse who constantly threatened to kill his wife and daughter. In stressful moods Judith bit her nails and plucked out her eyebrows and eyelashes and her cats' whiskers. C.P.S. was called in numerous times, but as Maria was reluctant to press charges and many of the reports/accounts were emotional and not physical abuse, the case was not pursued.
On Wednesday, July 27th, Eunice Daly, a next-door neighbor, heard a loud bang next door while watering her plants. The house had been set on fire, and later the Barsis' bodies were discovered shot dead. All of Judith's toys that were not destroyed by the fire were given to the local Goodwill, and her best friend continued to feed her cats for months afterward. - J.C. Quinn was born on 30 November 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Maximum Overdrive (1986), The Abyss (1989) and The Prophecy (1995). He died on 10 February 2004 in Mexico.
- An enchantingly beautiful, luminous blonde, Mary Ure was born in Glasgow on February 18th, 1933. Her first film was Zoltan Korda's Storm Over the Nile (1955), a misfiring remake of The Four Feathers (1939). Next was Windom's Way (1957) - a tale of rubber plantation strikes and marital strife, but more significant events had been occurring off-screen. In 1956, she starred as "Alison" in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" at the Royal Court theatre in London. She began an affair with the married Osborne and, after his divorce, they tied the knot in 1957. By 1958, however, the marriage was falling apart. Osborne could be cold and detached and he did not hold his wife in particularly high esteem, as he wrote in the second volume of his memoirs, "Almost a Gentleman".
She began an affair with Robert Shaw around 1959 though she wasn't divorced from Osborne until 1962 and was complicit in the charade that the father of her first child, Colin born 31 August 1961, was Osborne's. In the meantime, she transferred her fragile, captivating portrayal of "Alison Porter" from stage to screen in the 1959 film adaptation of Look Back in Anger (1959), which also starred Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Her beautiful performance of "Clara Dawes" in 1960's Sons and Lovers (1960) won her an Oscar nomination. In this time, she also performed a season at Stratford and, while pregnant, "The Changeling" at the Royal Court with Shaw. At the time she was pregnant, Jennifer Bourke, Shaw's first wife, was also pregnant by him (at his death in 1978 he left 9 children).
In 1963, she married Shaw and, after an absence of three years, returned to cinema screens with a good performance in The Mind Benders (1963) with Dirk Bogarde, a thought-provoking sci-fi drama. Then it was The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) and the flawed Custer of the West (1967), both with Shaw. Neither of these productions made a significant impact, though Ure performed admirably. In 1968, she made her one and only bona-fide big-budget blockbuster, Where Eagles Dare (1968) with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. It was a huge success but it would be two years before Ure's next, and last, film appearance.
In the meantime, she had continued to act on stage. Shaw's first wife, Jennifer Bourke, had given up her career as an actress to be a wife and mother. Ure didn't give up her career but the demands of motherhood (she bore Shaw 3 more children) and her growing dependence on alcohol meant it lapsed. Her final film was A Reflection of Fear (1972), an interesting horror psychodrama but Ure was absurdly cast as the mother of Sondra Locke, only 11 years younger than herself. After this, she returned to the stage. She died of an accidental overdose on April 3rd, 1975, taking too many sleeping pills on top of alcohol after a very late night, following an opening night on the London stage. She was a wonderful actress whose luster lingers in the mind long after the film has ended. Sadly, her own life ended aged at just 42. - Primula Rollo was born on 18 February 1918 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Her Man Gilbey (1944). She was married to David Niven. She died on 21 May 1946 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.
- Penelope Bartley was born on 22 December 1925 in Hendon, Middlesex, England, UK. She was an actress, known for ITV Play of the Week (1955), Quinneys (1948) and The Big Chance (1957). She was married to Leslie Phillips. She died on 24 June 1981 in Hendon, Middlesex, England, UK.
- Angela Scoular was born on 8 November 1945 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Casino Royale (1967) and You Rang, M'Lord? (1988). She was married to Leslie Phillips. She died on 11 April 2011 in Maida Vale, London, England, UK.
- Producer
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Alan J. Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Best Director for All the President's Men (1976) and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice (1982).
He also directed Presumed Innocent (1990), The Pelican Brief (1993) and The Devil's Own (1997), his last film.
From October 19, 1963, until 1971, Pakula was married to actress Hope Lange. He was married to his second wife, Hannah Pakula from 1973 until his death in 1998.
Pakula died on November 19, 1998, in a car accident, he was 70 years old.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Denver, Co, 6 August, 1925 and originally named Barbara Jane Bates, Barbara was the eldest of 3 daughters born to a postal clerk and RN.
Rather shy, her mother initially sent Barbara to study ballet. By her late teens, the young beauty began to model clothes as a teen out of high school.
Fighting off a life-long paralyzing shyness,she managed to be persuaded to enter a local beauty contest, with the winner receiving 2 round-trip train tickets to Hollywood.
Barbara won the contest, and with that the demure but very troubled young woman was on the first steps of her career.
Once in California, she met Cecil Coan, a United Artists publicist. Coan, a married man with children who was more than two decades older than Barbara, fell hard for the young beauty. He promised to guide her career and make her a star.
He proved his worth and dedication to her when he left his wife and married Barbara.
Groomed in obscure starlet bits, it wasn't until Warner Bros. signed her in 1947 and perpetuated an appealing girl-next-door image when her career started happening. It took some time before the actress started making strides apart from the bobby-soxxer ingénue.
She turned heads and supported herself initially as a pin-up girl, a job she didn't enjoy. She rose in rank after a number of bit parts and, during her peak as a lead and second lead, appeared opposite a number of stars, including Bette Davis in June Bride (1948), Danny Kaye in The Inspector General (1949), Rory Calhoun in I'd Climb the Highest Mountain (1951), and even Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis in their comedy,The Caddy (1953) just to name a few.
Much of Barbara's work in the above films was routine. Barbara's on-and-off-screen life started unraveling not long afterward. Succumbing to extreme mood shifts, insecurity, ill health and chronic depression to the point of being taken off important film assignments. By age 30, the promise she had once shown was no longer considered, and she and her husband Coen, who made all of Barbara's decisions for her, tried to salvage her career in England.
Things looked promising at first, when she was picked up by the Rank Organisation and co-starred with John Mills and Michael Craig in a couple of dramatic suspense films, but the films were mediocre. She again started showing signs of instability to the point where she was dropped from 2 films and the Rank Organisation was forced to drop her.
The couple returned to Hollywood, where old friend Rory Calhoun cast her in a picture he was producing and starring in called Apache Territory (1958).
Emotionally unable to withstand the pressures of Hollywood any more, Barbara abandoned her career, save for an appearance in The Loaded Tourist (1962),starring Roger Moore.
Nothing was heard of Barbara until her March 1969 death. It was learned she'd returned to her hometown of Denver and worked in various jobs, including stints as a secretary, dental assistant and hospital aide. Her much older husband and chief supporter, Cecil Coan, died of cancer in January 1967, and Barbara fell apart.
Although she remarried in December of 1968 to a childhood friend, sportscaster William Reed, she remained increasingly despondent. She committed suicide just 4 months later. She was found dead in her car by her mother in her mother's garage of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Interestingly, the one role she'll always be identified with is also one of the smallest parts given her during her brief tenure as leading lady.
In the very last scene of All About Eve (1950). Barbara turns up in the role of Phoebe, a devious school girl and wannabe actress who shows startling promise as a future schemer along the lines of her equally ruthless idol, Eve Harrington, superbly played by Anne Baxter.
Barbara's image is enshrined in the picture's very last scene - posing in front of a 3-way mirror while clutching Baxter's just-received acting award. It's this brief, moment for which she'll best be remembered.- Tim Cowgill was born on 19 November 1957 in Maywood, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Desert Fox (2009), Satisfy Me (2007) and The Michael Jackson Trial (2005). He died on 13 June 2010 in Auburn Township, Ohio, USA.
- Imogen Hassall is sometimes referred to as "The Countess of Cleavage" as she was better known for her glamorous celebrity than her acting talent. Imogen was born on August 25 1942, in Woking, Surrey, England and rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an international B-movie starlet. To her frustration, her fame was brief and she never became a star in her own right. She died at age 38, in London on November 16 1980, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
- Clara Blandick was an American actress born as Clara Dickey and born aboard an American ship off the coast of Hong Kong on June 4, 1880. Little is known about her early life until she became an actress. She grew up in Boston and first acted on stage in E.H. Sothern's 'Richard Lovelace'. Although she appeared in 118 films, she was primarily a stage actress. She began her film career at a late age. She was 33 when she was picked for the role as Emily Mason in Mrs. Black Is Back (1914). Her next film was The Stolen Triumph (1916), after which she returned to the stage, where she seemed more comfortable. She did not make another film until the age of 48, when she appeared in Poor Aubrey (1930).
She had only three films under her belt by this time but would appear in more than 100 over the next 20 years. She made nine films in 1930, and thirteen the following year. The role that was to immortalize her, however, was "Auntie Em" in The Wizard of Oz (1939). She continued in films until 1950, when she appeared on the screen for the final time in Key to the City (1950).
By this time Blandick had been suffering from poor health for years, especially painful arthritis and failing eyesight, and retired from the screen. On Palm Sunday, April 15, 1962, aged 85, she went to church in Hollywood. When she returned she wrote a note stating she was about to take the greatest adventure of her life. She took an overdose of sleeping tablets and pulled a plastic bag over her head, thus ending her life. - Actor
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Bert Moorhouse was born on 20 November 1894 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Rough Ridin' Red (1928), The Woman I Love (1929) and The Pay-Off (1930). He was married to Mary. He died on 26 January 1954 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
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Carlos Thompson was born on 7 June 1923 in Santa Fe, Santa Fe, Argentina. He was an actor and director, known for Mistress of the World (1960), A Matter of Resistance (1966) and El túnel (1952). He was married to Lilli Palmer. He died on 10 October 1990 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Actress
- Soundtrack
This pert, petite, delicate, dreamy-eyed French dish of post-war filming with the piled-high blonde hairdo was a one-time threat to the sexy, kittenish pedestal Brigitte Bardot stood on during the 1950s. While working for such legendary directors as Marcel Carné, Marc Allégret, Julien Duvivier, Henri Decoin and René Clair, she also got to work opposite France's most handsome leading men, including Georges Marchal, Jean Marais, Jean Servais, François Périer, Daniel Gélin, Jacques Sernas and singer Marcel Amont, Dany became the epitome of the romantic, virginal heroine in light comedy souffles, although she was just as entrancing and touching in dramatic works.
Born Danielle Robin on April 4, 1927, the lithe Dany trained as a ballerina as a child and eventually made her way dancing with the Opera de Paris. At age 19, however, she opted for a movie career and decided to study at the Paris Conservatoire. Making her screen debut with a bit part in Lunegarde (1946), she first turned heads in the romantic dramedy Man About Town (1947) directed by Clair and starring Maurice Chevalier.
Dany continued to touch pulses with her naïve lovelies throughout the 50's with such pictures as Naughty Martine (1947); Monelle (1948); four films co-starring heartthrob Georges Marchal, whom she married in 1951 -- La passagère (1949), La voyageuse inattendue (1950), The Thirst of Men (1950) and Valley of Fire (1951); Elle et moi (1952); Deux sous de violettes (1951); Frou-Frou (1955); the title role in the films Holiday for Henrietta (1952) and Julietta (1953); the US/French co-production Act of Love (1953) starring Kirk Douglas; Napoleon (1955) (as Desiree); Frou-Frou (1955); Maid in Paris (1956); C'est arrivé à Aden... (1956); Bonsoir Paris (1956); C'est la faute d'Adam (1958); L'école des cocottes (1958); the title role in Mimi Pinson (1958); and The Chasers (1959).
Though most of her films were produced in her own homeland, Dany branched out internationally from time to time in the 1960's, appearing in the British sex comedy Waltz of the Toreadors (1962) opposite Peter Sellers and the innocuous, teen-oriented flick Follow the Boys (1963) starring singing teen pop idol Connie Francis here in the U.S. She matured with roles in Love and the Frenchwoman (1960), Les mystères de Paris (1962), Mandrin (1962), X-Ray of a Killer (1965) and a pair of British comedies Carry on Don't Lose Your Head (1967) and The Best House in London (1969). She would last appear on film in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Topaz (1969), an American production.
Divorced from first husband Marchal, the father of her two children, in 1968, Dany married British agent/producer Michael Sullivan the following year and retired quietly. On May 25, 1995, the 68-year-old former actress was tragically killed, along with Sullivan, in a fire that consumed their Paris apartment.